That is a typical neo-reb half truth. President Lincoln was faced with something of a situation. Seven states had already thrown down the national authority. President Lincoln was always ready to stop shooting and start talking. It was the slave power that pushed things to the limit.
Lincoln's bedrock position was that there be no expansion of slavery. He knew slavery would die if it were restricted. The rebels knew it too. That is why the Democratic platform in 1860 advocated securing Cuba -- to help keep the institution profitable and viable for the slave breeders.
It is grotesque to defend them.
Walt
You mean like he did at Atlanta when innocent civilians pled before his general Bill Sherman not to loot and burn their city? Or are you talking about his well known willingness to discuss and negotiate POW exchanges?
Lincoln's bedrock position was that there be no expansion of slavery.
It was generally a position of his. It is also a position that he could have achieved had he let the confederacy willingly alienate itself from any access to the territories by seceding peacefully. But the fact that he acted differently indicates there were other motives at play. Among them, his seeming obsession with the collection of revenues seems to be one of these.
He knew slavery would die if it were restricted.
That is interesting speculation on your part, but unfortunately for you it is little more. Call it wishful thinking, delusion, ignorance, or what have you. History indicates very clearly that The Lincoln was perfectly willing to extend slavery indefinately by constitutional amendment if doing so would further his political causes and power.
In any event, here's another snippet from the historical record on that same subject.
" The combined effects of these two tariffs must be to desolate the entire North, to stop its importations, cripple its commerce and turn its capital into another channel; for, although there is specie now lying idle in New York to the amount of nearly forty millions of dollars, and as much more in the other large cities, waiting for an opportunity of investment, it will be soon scattered all over the country, wherever the most available means of using it are presented, and it will be lost to the trade of this city and the other Northern states. There is nothing to be predicted of the combination of results produced by the Northern and Southern tariffs but general ruin to the commerce of the Northern confederacy... The tariff of the South opens its ports upon fair and equitable terms to the manufacturers of foreign countries, which it were folly to suppose will not be eagerly availed of; which the stupid and suicidal tariff just adopted by the Northern Congress imposes excessive and almost prohibitory duties upon the same articles. Thus the combination of abolition fanatics and stockjobbers in Washington has reduced the whole North to the verge of ruin, which nothing can avert unless the administration recognizes the necessity of at once calling an extra session of Congress to repeal the Morrill tariff, and enact such measures as may bring back the seceded States, and reconstruct the Union upon terms of conciliation, justice and right." - The New York Herald, March 19, 1861