Walt!!! Finally you got it!!! Later in the war. By late 1862, lincoln had lost the support from his other avenues and HAD to turn to the abolitionists(even though he IS quoted as not wanting to be painted with the 'abolitionist brush' in 1860). He picked up their chant and black equality and black suffrage became his rallying cry ONLY AFTER Sept 22,1862, the date the Emancipation Proclamation was released!! Before that time, he could have cared less for the slave. It was over taxation plain and simple. But that tack only worked so long. So he had to pick up something else to chant over the masses. Slavery!!
The abolition movement was small at best in 1860, and as you can see by most of your northern papers, was not a major issue until 1863
You simply cannot show that in the record. The Union army, and the power of the American people to prosecute the war against the rebellion grew and grew until the rebellion was crushed out. It never slackened. You might be interested to know that only 6% of the Union Army was provided for by the draft. The percentage in the CSA army was much higher. And of course it was the CSA army that melted away through desertion, not the Union Army.
The rebellion really just fizzled out.
It is also common knowledge that there was much initial resitance to the Emancipatioin Proclamation in the army, and the country generally. It was part of Lincoln's genius that he knew when he make decisions of this type. And in this case, he rode out the storm of opposition to the EP. He wrote in April, 1864:
"When in March, and May and July 1862 I made earnest, and succcessive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable neccessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have them without the measure."
Who needed the abolitionists? Certainly not Lincoln.
You neo-cons make all these crazed charges and then you never back them up in the record.
He picked up their chant and black equality and black suffrage became his rallying cry ONLY AFTER Sept 22,1862, the date the Emancipation Proclamation was released!! Before that time, he could have cared less for the slave. It was over taxation plain and simple. But that tack only worked so long. So he had to pick up something else to chant over the masses. Slavery!!
That is simply not true. Lincoln --always-- oposed slavery. Always. His absolute, don't-give-an-inch position was that slavery not be allowed to extend into the territories.
He knew that was a first step to the death of slavery.
The slave holders knew it too.
Walt