Lincoln went south on a trip to New Orleans and it's said that he was revolted by slavery. More to the point perhaps, he'd worked his way up from poverty in a free society and economy and the idea of slavery just didn't appeal to him.
When it's part of your culture, it doesn't occur to most people to regard it as wrong. This sort of Oikophobia is normally a characteristic of Liberals.
You have to be radically polarized to believe that things you would otherwise think wrong are right because they are part of your culture. Such an view reflects the relativism that is also said to be characteristic of liberals.
But it should be clear by now that slave states and free states were evolving very different cultures. Lincoln was being true to the best side of his free state culture by opposing the expansion of slavery.
Lincoln repeatedly said he would do nothing to interfere with Slavery.
Lincoln repeatedly said he thought slavery was wrong, but wasn't going to do anything about it where it existed. He recognized that support for slavery was too strong there, and support for abolition would lead to disunion. It didn't do any good, as even his position was unacceptable to the slave states.
Flip Flopping is a sign someone doesn't really hold strong principles about something. This tends to make you believe that what they say is an artifice to help their political career.
"Flip-flopping" would be saying "Slavery is great!" one day and "Slavery is awful!" the next. Recognizing that something is not good and that little can be done about it doesn't count as "flip-flopping." What's possible in politics changes over time. What's desirable can also change.
Think of Nixon and China. Nixon wasn't saying Mao was bad yesterday and good today. He was saying, we can now achieve our long-term goals better with China inside the world political system than with China outside it.
I realize that Richard Nixon isn't the best example to cite when talking about political principle. Maybe Churchill is better. He recognized that Stalin was evil, but that he would have to cooperate with Stalin to ensure Britain's survival and Hitler's defeat.
It's easy to be smug about "principles" when you don't have responsibility for anything. It's easy to be inflexible when what you say and do won't have any possible effect on what happens in the world.
And more importantly, opposing the expansion of the representation vote for the people who were paying 80% of the bills.
You see, this is the sort of thing that makes me cynical. Three years ago I didn't know the South was paying the vast majority of the bills. I didn't know that New York was collecting the money and sending a good chunk to Washington DC.
I didn't know about the money side of this part of history. When I found out about it, I started looking more deeply at it.
What would happen if slavery "expanded" into Kansas, and Nebraska, and other western territories? (where it couldn't really expand because you couldn't make plantation farming work in any of these territories) Well those areas would vote with the Southern coalition against the Chicago/NewYork/WashingtonDC coalition.
They would lower tariffs, and they would probably modify the shipping laws to make it easier for competitors to carry their shipping traffic.
This would deprive New York of a lot of money. It was therefore in New York's best interest to hype the horrors of slavery so as to manipulate people into siding with their coalition.
Of course they wanted people to focus on the horrible horrible possibility that slave masters might be whipping poor people in Kansas and Nebraska, and they didn't want people to pay any attention to the fact that the status quo kept 200 million funneling through New York.
Lincoln repeatedly said he thought slavery was wrong, but wasn't going to do anything about it where it existed.
Because where it existed was a minority voting block in terms of congressional power. The one thing he absolutely would not tolerate is the possibility of it becoming the majority power, and able to stop the money stream going into New York.
The fact that slavery in any of the territories was implausible was irrelevant. The point was the power of Congressional representation, and the South must under no circumstances gain ally states which would interfere with the lucrative money stream they had set up to enrich the wealthy men of power in New York and Washington DC.
Realizing that control of the money stream oddly coincides with every activity pursued by Lincoln and the New York power block was eye opening.
Perhaps i'm cynical, but every path I see always leads back to the money. Not morals, Money. The morals are always camouflage for the money. Same as today in the modern Democrat (Urban Liberal) Party.