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I would add a few more reasons. Lincoln, after having started the war at the behest of his Northern corporate fatcat political supporters for money and empire discovered to his horror that what he thought would be a cakewalk turned out instead to be a very bloody affair. Now he needed some "noble" cause to dress it up in - after all, lots of Northerners had been killed and lots more left crippled and maimed. It doesn't do to tell the loved ones of somebody who was killed or who had a leg blown off that it was all for money and empire no matter how true that actually is. People don't want to hear that. So, two years after they started the war, after offering slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment, after the Northern dominated Congress passed a resolution specifically saying they were not fighting over slavery they then discovered it had been "all about slavery". PC Revisionists have clung to that laughable war time propaganda ever since.

I've often lamented in the past that the "genius" Presidents get us involved in F***ed up sh*t. Carter was supposed be "brilliant." Kennedy was supposed to be "Brilliant". Woodrow Wilson was supposed to be "Brilliant, and of course Abraham Lincoln clearly was "brilliant."

As is usual with "brilliant" intellectuals, they are often "too smart by half". They end up making a mess because they had the arrogance to think they knew what was going to happen, and it turned into a horrible mess because they overestimated their own powers of perception.

Yes, Lincoln lit the fuse on a very horrible war, and even though he was warned by his cabinet, he did it anyways because he thought he could handle it.

And yes, after so much bloodshed, they wanted to exploit a religious angle and claim it was "God's work." It was the only excuse that people would accept for all the horrors they brought to the people of both North and South.