“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...”
If this is true - and there are statements by Lincoln and others that raise doubts - then we can forever dismiss the notion that Lincoln and the North fought the war to “free the slaves.”
Nonsense and you well know it.
The truth of history is that what began as a war to defeat Confederates and restore the Union became, long before it ended, also a war to destroy slavery, first by Proclamation and finally by Constitutional amendment s.