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Lincoln made clear in the 1858 debates his attitude toward blacks. Said Lincoln:

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly n ot in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

Thus Lincoln's statement in 1858 is that blacks had a right to the fruitages of their labor like everyone else.
In other statements Lincoln supported laws that forbade inter-racial marriage, etc.
Lincoln was also prepared to accept a wholly slave U.S. or wholly free so his views were more pragmatic than moral.

What treatment of the opposition you say? Lincoln's order:

“EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 18, 1864. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. DIX, Commanding at New York: Whereas there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at war against the Government and their aiders and abettors, you are therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors, and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers, and all such persons as, after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said publication, print and publish the same with intent to give aid and comfort to the enemy; and you will hold the persons so arrested in close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military commission for their offense. You will also take possession by military force of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce, and hold the same until further orders, and prohibit any further publication therefrom. A. LINCOLN.”

Then there was Clement Vallandigham whom Lincoln had sent to the South in a kind of internal exile.

You wrote:
“Some abolitionists thought the EC wasn't good enough. The vast majority recognized it as an important step forward.”

A step forward toward what? The Confederate states weren’t going to submit to the EP and it didn't apply to the Union states. Had the Confederacy won the EP would be moot and if the North won the EP would still be moot.

Lincoln made clear in the 1858 debates his attitude toward blacks.

A more humanitarian view than the average, for his day.

Lincoln was also prepared to accept a wholly slave U.S. or wholly free so his views were more pragmatic than moral.

They were both. The crisis at hand was the threat to the Union. If the Confederacy were successful in its treason, the Union would likely have been permanently divided and slavery, as far as he could tell, permanently perpetuated.

If slavery remained legal and the crisis of the Union were averted thereby, there was always the chance that slavery could be ended as more free states entered the Union and the possibility of a 13th Amendment became constitutionally more likely.

You accomplish the good that you can.

What treatment of the opposition you say? Lincoln's order:

That was a case of a newspaper fraudulently claiming, in wartime, that the President and Congress had passed controversial legislation that they had not passed.

That was clearly an act of treason and the executive order was obviously richly deserved and entirely constitutional.

Then there was Clement Vallandigham whom Lincoln had sent to the South in a kind of internal exile.

Vallandigham was a traitor who should have been summarily executed. Lincoln's treatment of him was incredibly generous - if you were implying that Lincoln treated dissenters cruelly or illegally you could not have come up with two worse examples.

A step forward toward what?

Eventual national emancipation.

The Confederate states weren’t going to submit to the EP

Of course not. As the Confederacy's Vice President declared to great acclaim, the entire Confederate government and Constitution were founded upon slavery as their one great principle.

But in the areas of the traitor states that were controlled by the US government, the legal possibility obtained that emancipation would come there too.

As it eventually did.

and it didn't apply to the Union states.

But had slavery been abolished and uprooted in the Confederacy, the remaining slave states would likely have benefitted from compensated emancipation as an earnest of their loyalty.

Had the Confederacy won the EP would be moot

The Confederacy could only have won by conquering the Union and imposing the Confederate constitutional doctrine of universal slavery upon it. Absent such a total victory by one side or the other, the Union and the Confederacy would have been at perpetual war, as the founders of the Confederacy intended.

and if the North won the EP would still be moot.

The North did win, and the Emancipation Proclamation was extended and strengthened by the Thirteenth Amendment.