The only reason the weak and cowardly progressives have dispatched their servants to push this weak anti-Lincoln narrative is they’re still mad.
They lost the war and they lost their criminal ownership of slaves.
Face it. Lincoln freed the slaves. Do you need to read his writings to understand it was a life mission for him?
The Republicans were the "progressives" in 1860. They were big city tax and spend liberals who wanted power so they could funnel money into their crony capitalist allies.
They didn't actually care about slavery, they just used it as a tool to get votes. What they cared about is taxing the South at 73% of total Federal revenues and spending the money on projects that benefited themselves and their crony friends later known as "Robber Barons."
They lost the war and they lost their criminal ownership of slaves.
It was completely legal under the laws of the United States to own slaves at that time.
Face it. Lincoln freed the slaves. Do you need to read his writings to understand it was a life mission for him?
I've read quite a bit of his writings. He was an excellent writer, and I do not doubt that he disapproved of slavery, but he was not as committed to it's eradication as people have been led to believe. One does not urge passage of the Corwin amendment and claim that slavery was an imperative moral issue.
Abolition of slavery was a tool that Lincoln used, but one which he had never intended to use when the war was launched against the South.
After it had become so bitter, Lincoln decided it was better to break their economy so as to keep them from ever recovering enough power to challenge Washington DC and it's New York Crony Robber Barons, again.
If he was doing it out of concern for the slaves, he would have done it in April of 1861. The fact that it took to 1863 to issue a decree to free some of the slaves in areas of the country he did not control, shows that it was a tactical move, not a moral move.
Even his own Secretary of State (William H. Seward) was so disgusted with his hypocrisy that he said:
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
If the war was about slavery, they could have started abolition with Maryland and Delaware. The fact that they tolerated slavery in the North all through the war demonstrates they weren't all that concerned with slavery.