no the war started because South Carolina and some other states decided they didn’t like the results of an election and tried to secede.
Lincoln was absolutely an abolitionist, although he toned down his rhetoric and made concessions about it while politicking in order to show he wasn’t a “radical”, who would jeopardize the Union by doing something rash.
The South gave him the perfect opportunity to destroy slavery completely.
Lincoln’s main intention in 1860 was to stop the spread of slavery to the west and isolate the slave states, which was the strategy of most political abolitionists. In general, many abolitionists felt that progress all around the south would eventually force the end of slavery without firing a shot, although it would take a long time to do so.
Had the south not seceded, then they could have kept their slavery for a little while longer, until it became economically and politically impossible to support.
The first shots were fired at Ft Sumter at ships leaving, loaded with cotton, without paying taxes. That started the war.
iirc, Lincoln had proposed reparations to slave holders for the loss of their workforce (the northern slaveholders received their reparations in the form of being able to sell their slaves to southern slaveholders some years prior to the Unjust War).
slavenorth.com imo, is a good resource for discovering more about slavery in north and south USA