[Restorer]

I really don't have time for an extended debate about the WBTS and Lincoln's criminality. However, I do think it is possible for there to be a middle ground between thinking of blacks as animals to be exploited for the profit of others for their entire life, and viewing them as the exact equals of white men.

Lincoln was somewhere in this middle ground, along with the vast majority of northern whites of the time. By today's standards this made them racist. So what?

I happen to believe northerners with this attitude were wrong. However, they were a lot less wrong than those, the vast majority of southerners, who were willing to fight, kill and die to preserve the abominable institution of slavery. A more un-American attitude it is hard to imagine.