Well, at least keeping the Virginia portion of it. Again, it's sounding either like a bit of a bait and switch, get Virginia to abandon this secessionist talk and then later go after the friends they were supporting, or an abandonment of this idea of "Preserving the Union" by keeping the most valuable state and letting the rest go.
Is there a third explanation? It appears to me that the strategy must have been to either temporarily mollify the Virginians, or to permanently mollify the Virginians.
Your take on this might be interesting. I'm not seeing as to how this can be portrayed as "principled" any way you go about it.
No, you have it all wrong.
Lincoln believed, accurately, that the majority of Virginians, and other Upper South states, were strong Unionists who would not vote to secede.
Lincoln also believed, inaccurately, that Virginians would support his efforts to restore Federal properties within the rump-Confederacy.
You may remember that, after Fort Sumter's surrender, Lincoln's call for 75,000 Union troops went out to all states, not just those north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Lincoln hoped and expected that his call for troops would be respected and responded to by Upper South and Border States as well.
He was wrong about that, but it was his intention.
The reality for Lincoln turned out, after Sumter: secessionists outnumbered Unionists about two-to-one in the Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas), and they soon voted to join the Confederacy's war, to which they supplied most (but not all) of their troops.
But Unionists still outnumbered secessionists two-to-one in Border States (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware), so they never voted to secede, and did send larger numbers of troops to the Union cause.
DiogenesLamp: "Your take on this might be interesting.
I'm not seeing as to how this can be portrayed as "principled" any way you go about it."
But your efforts to impose your own warped "principles" on Lincoln are not amusing.
Again: Lincoln's first principles were preserving & restoring the Union, peacefully if possible, without recognizing the Confederacy's legitimacy, while negotiating for loyalty from Unionists in Southern states whenever practical.
In my reviews of Lincoln's words & deeds, there was never a time when he abandoned, or even compromised these basic principles.
So, what exactly is your problem with that?