YES, he needed but did not necessarily want a 13th Amendment.Well that's definitive.
Really? If Lincoln had succeeded, and he had restored all the late states in rebellion to the Union as though they had never left, with full representation in Congress, when do you think the 13th (or 14th, 15th) Amendment would have been ratified by the required three-fourths of the States?That was an interesting question. Are you saying the former slave holding states would have refused to vote for abolishing slavery?
If I had written something like that, you may have quoted me doing so. Instead of addressing the question, you hide, duck, and weave by a diversion.
I already quoted Lincoln on the applicable law. I'll do it again, and then quote Randall so you may enjoy an educational experience.
Lincoln wrote to Orville Browning, September 22, 1861:
What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. If a commanding General finds a necessity to seize the farm of a private owner, for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it, as long as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because within military necessity. But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner, or his heirs forever; and this as well when the farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor of military law about it. And the same is true of slaves. If the General needs them, he can seize them, and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition. That must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations. The proclamation in the point in question, is simply dictatorship.'' It assumes that the general may do anything he pleases—confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal ones. And going the whole figure I have no doubt would be more popular with some thoughtless people, than that which has been done! But I cannot assume this reckless position; nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility. You speak of it as being the only means of saving the government. On the contrary it is itself the surrender of the government. Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S.—any government of Constitution and laws,—wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?
CW 4:531-32
As you insist on playing stupid, I must endeavor to enlighten you on the law.
James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, 1951, at 382-385: (footnotes omitted)
Its legal effect is a different matter. Slavery existed on the basis of law; and if it were to be permanently abolished, this would have to be done by some process of law. Just what would have been the status of slavery if there had been no anti-slavery amendment, is a difficult question. While insisting that the freedom declared in his proclamation was irrevocable, Lincoln had doubts as to the manner in which the courts would treat his edict. He thought that it was a war measure and would be inoperative at the close of the war, but he was not sure. His attitude toward the Thirteenth Amendment showed how conscious he was of legal deficiencies in the proclamation, and these doubts were reflected in Congress where proposals to incorporate the proclamation into Federal law were presented by supporters of the administration.One of the ablest lawyers of that day [Richard H. Dana] put the matter thus: “That an army may free the slaves of an enemy is a settled right of law. . . . But if any man fears or hopes that the proclamation did as a matter of law by its own force, alter the legal status of one slave in America ... he builds his fears or hopes on the sand.
It is a military act and not a decree of a legislator. It has no legal effect by its own force on the status of the slave. ... If you sustain the war you must expect to see the war work out emancipation.” And Secretary Welles of the Navy wrote in 1863: “What is to be the ultimate effect of the Proclamation, and what will be the exact status of the slaves . . . were the States now to resume their position, I am not prepared to say. The courts would adjudicate the questions; there would be legislative action in Congress and in the States also.” He added, however, that no slave who had left a “rebel” master and come within the Union lines, or who had served under the flag, could ever again be forced into involuntary servitude.
Hare, a reliable authority on constitutional law, is somewhat more positive as to the permanent effect of the proclamation. It was, he said, a mere command which could effect no change till executed by the hand of war; “but if carried into execution it might, like other acts jure belli, work a change that would survive on the return of peace.” Admitting the right of emancipation as coming within the jus belli, one could say that the liberated slave would be as secure in his altered status as contraband property, if seized, would be in its new ownership. This would apply only to those slaves actually liberated by the incidents of war.
Taken at its best, however, the proclamation, with its partial application, was not a comprehensive solution of the slavery problem; and, in spite of this striking use of national authority, the slavery question, from 1863 to 1865, still remained, in large part, a State matter.
DiogenesLamp even argues that all slaves freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation should have been returned to their alleged "masters" after Confederate surrenders, but before ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.
It's a ludicrous argument.
At most you might say that freedmen, once freed, could only be returned to slavery if they volunteered, or if, as the 13th Amendment provides, as punishment for crime.