And interestingly enough he also wrote after it, holding the same views.
"Had all those men at the North, who believed these ideas to be true, promulgated them, as is was their plain and obvious duty to do, it is reasonable to suppose that we should long since have had freedom, without shedding one drop of blood; certainly without one tithe of the blood that has now been shed; for the slaveholders would never have dared, in the face of the world, to attempt to overthrow a government that gave freedom to all, for the sake of establishing In its place one that should make slaves of those who, by the existing constitution, were free. But so long as the North, and especially so long as the professed (though hypocritical) advocates of liberty, like those named, conceded the constitutional right of property in slaves, they gave the slaveholders the full benefit of the argument that they were insulted, disturbed, and endangered in the enjoyment of their acknowledged constitutional rights ; and that it was therefore necessary to their honor, security, and happiness that they should have a separate government. And this argument, conceded to them by the North, has not only given them strength and union among themselves, but has given them friends, both in the North and among foreign nations; and has cost the nation hundreds of thousands of lives, and thousands of millions of treasure. Upon yourself, and others like you, professed friends of freedom, who, instead of promulgating what you believed to be the truth, have, for selfish purposes, denied it, and thus conceded to the slaveholders the benefit of an argument to which they had no claim, - upon your heads, more even, if possible, than upon the slaveholders themselves, (who have acted only in accordance with their associations, interests, and avowed principles as slaveholders.) rests the blood of this horrible, unnecessary, and therefore guilty, war. Your concessions, as to the pro-slavery character of the constitution, have been such as, if true, would prove the constitution unworthy of having one drop of blood shed in its support. They have been such as to withhold from the North all the benefit of the argument, that a war for the constitution was’ a war for liberty. You have thus, to the extent of your ability, placed the North wholly in the wrong, and the South wholly in the right. And the effect of these false positions in which the North and the South have respectively been placed, not only with your consent, but, in part, by your exertions, has been to fill the land with blood."
That is from Lysander Spooner's 1864 letter to Sen. Charles Sumner, a leader of the radical Republicans.
You write considerably afterwards, and thus do not have the excuse that the reverend does.
Reverend? Spooner was an abolitionist philosopher, not a preacher. And he also wrote on the war after slavery had been abolished. From his 1870 book "No Treason" -
"The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon he sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general --- not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man --- although that was not the motive of the war --- as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle --- but only of degree --- between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree."
Considering that Spooner had been a prominent member of the abolitionist movement since the 1830's, had been one of its national spokesmen since 1845, and had been employing his skill as a lawyer to provide defense arguments for fugitive slaves thus securing their freedom individually decades before anything Lincoln ever did, I think it is safe to say that he knew what he was talking about on the slavery issue in 1860 as well as 1864 and 1870.
Ask your African American friends if THEY think Lincoln should never have been President. If you have any.
Well, one of em is a card carrying southern heritage activist with pictures of Robert E. Lee printed in his checkbook so I think it is safe to say that he isn't too fond of the great centralizer. But that is beside the point. Since when does one have to be black to determine whether or not Abe Lincoln was a good president?