“But alas, if the intent was the freedom of all slaves,”
I’ve never said it was the intent to free all slaves. That may be what public schools teach, expressly or by implication. but I don’t care what they say. However overrated is Lincoln’s achievement in the popular consciousness, just because he didn’t live to see all slaves free does not mean we are free to dilute the credit he deserves for for freeing 4 million of them.
“’Great Emancipator’ was totally cool with slaves in the areas he still controlled.”
Funny how the same people who call Lincoln a bloddy, mad, fascist Constitution burner fault him for limiting emancipation to those over whom he had authority to free only as commander in chief, if that (there were lingering doubts over the peacetime legality of emergency war measures). And your “totally cool” line is pretty thoroughly demolished by his having been instrumental in pushing through the 13th amendment.