That's an odd position for a Republican in 1860. The Republican Party was explicitly formed in 1854 to stamp out those twins vestigages of barbarism, bigamy and slavery.
Lincoln was personally very much opposed to slavery. I do not think there is one iota of reliable evidence to the contrary, Professor Obama notwithstanding. To think otherwise is to have missed the entire thrust of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
He understood that as president he had very limit legal authority to free slaves and was quoted as saying that if he could perserve the Union and free no slave he would or if he could perserve the Union and free all slaves he would.
He waited until after the Union victory at Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, because before then it would have looked like desparation. Some historians believe that the Emancipation Proclamation was intended to undermine European, especially British, support for the Confederacy. Lincoln was certain that if the South was yoked to the North slavery would end sooner or later. He did not seek the Civil War, but he certainly exploited Northern victory to end slavery.
Lincoln wasn’t opposed to slavery, he used that as a means to justify his end. This doesn’t sound like a man that was sympathetic to the black man.
Abraham Lincoln Quotes:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”
“”I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.”
Lincoln didn’t start the ball rolling on secession but he did bring it to a head and became the worst tyrant this country has ever had. He committed the U.S. to a war without the consent of Congress, blockaded a Southern port without a declaration of war, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, imprisoned dozens of newspaper editors, replaced Maryland’s state representatives with federal appointees and imprisoned the elected officials in Fort McHenry (where they had to live in filth and eat food not fit for animals).
He ordered the extermination of untold thousands of people, bringing the war to civilians. Telegraph wires cut? Simple. Take four or five citizens from the nearest town, line them up against the wall and shoot them. What about homes with women, children and the elderly? Give them the chance to vacate and if the slaves tried to defend…. shoot them. If Booth hadn’t parted Lincoln’s hair at Ford’s Theater, who knows whether he would have ever given up power. He was a tyrant with an army behind him. How many of those have given up power without being killed?
Hopefully one day, Lincoln’s statue will be dragged out of his temple and America’s real #1 terrorist will then be exposed in real history books. Meanwhile, the fictional Lincoln lives on in the hearts and souls of the ignorant.