So according to you, he was the only person, out of the 22 million people living in the North, concerned that seven states had seceded from the Union.
Exactly what reward would Lincoln have reaped from the ratification of the XIII Amendment.
Well, according to the Gospel of DegenerateLamp he was hoping for a slot on Letterman’s show.
Don't put words in my mouth. He was the one who would benefit the most from the South being enticed to remain in the Union, which is exactly what the Corwin amendment was designed to do.
We have contemporaries and familiars citing his involvement in it, and he is the one who would most benefit from it, so Occam's razor certainly implies that we should accept the idea he was supporting it. As I have pointed out before, the very fact that the new President has voiced support for the amendment in his first inaugural gives his party membership an excuse to go along with it.
Can you show me any efforts of his to fight it?
Exactly what reward would Lincoln have reaped from the ratification of the XIII Amendment.
Breaking the economic power base of the South? Making certain that their then considerable economic power could never be used to work towards some sort of economic revenge against the people who had destroyed their lives and families?
You see, I look at potential alternative time lines.
Let me ask you, what would the wealthy plantation owners have done if they had retained their slaves? Would they have gleefully accepted rapprochement with the Northern industries with which they had previously done business, or would they have attempted to buy their own ships, traded with Europe themselves, and worked towards every means of cutting out any money going to the people who had invaded them?
Well you may have more optimism in human nature than have I, for I firmly believe they would have done everything they could to separate themselves economically from the North and Washington DC, and they would have worked to enact any sort of revenge of which they could think.
As a practical matter, it was definitely in Lincoln and the North's best interest to break their economic power base. Yes, it may have caused the people in the South immense suffering, but it enhanced the future security for the people in the North who had destroyed them.
Did they free the slaves because they cared about black people? I have come to think cynically that they did it primarily to break the South's economic back.