[wardaddy]

If anything ?

I was taught 55 years ago it was to preserve the Union, this simply to free slaves is the province of neocons and talk radio who trumpet that to deflect charge the GOPe is racist

Lincoln himself said

“ If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that”

[MikelTackNailer]

Lincoln was all about preserving the nation which he barely did with some very half-assed generals to start with. God seemed to favor the South with better ones but availability of necessary resources, bad communication and sheer brute manpower from the Northern aggressors prevailed.

This scenario of a Federal tyranny over the states has been upheld ever since and it's STILL wrong. We are 50 states of governments unto ourselves linked in a mutual agreement, not utterly dominated by a central power. Our Founders knew what follies ensue straying from the plan.

[Redmen4ever]

Warning: You might learn something!

Lincoln’s strategy for ending slavery wasn’t a civil war. It was to prevent the spread of slavery to the territories. Eventually and peacefully, without the carnage of a civil war, so many boys being put into the grave, very few of them slaveowners, just military age males responding to the call of duty, and without a hundred years of Jim Crow and sectionalism.

Lincoln was born and raised in Kentucky and his wife was a southern sympathizer. He was a veteran (of the Blackhawk Wars). He and his wife lost one son (to disease) prior to the war, and another (also to disease) during the war. We Republicans think of him as the most human of our presidents and wonder if he would have been able to bind our nation’s wounds had he lived.