Lincoln might have opposed the spread of slavery latter in life, but he supported a Constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed slavery to continue forever; and on numerous occasions stated that he had no desire to interfere with the prcatice, even in his first inaugural address,
'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.'His Emancipation Proclamation was a "war measure", intended to deprive the incite slave revolts in the Confederacy, to deprive the Confederacy of soldiers/laborers, and to prevent England or other foreign coutries from siding with the Confederacy. It attempted to free only slaves in the areas not under union control, even slaves in Washington DC were untouched.
All the South ever wanted to to be left alone, they sent delegates to negotiate renumeration for seized properties and other disputed items on several occasions which Lincoln rebuffed, even lying to former Supreme Court Justice Campbell. Lincoln continued this deception and lie in 1863 when he wrote to James Conklin, '
Now allow me to assure you, that no word or intimation, from that rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowledge or belief.'
Confederate President Davis, the Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate military, had sent commisioners Roman, Forsyth, and Crawford to Washington in 1861, 'for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.'
I think you know we disagree about Lincoln's political program. I think he had it in mind for a long time to solve the "slavery question" his way, if he were elected President, and to impose a Whig agenda, by precipitating a crisis which would greatly enlarge his radius of action as the Executive in an emergency and allow him to maneuver outside the bounds of the Constitution.
I've posted up before, so you know I think it, that Lincoln's positions in 1858-1860 were completely political and purely for public consumption, that he had outlined his real program only to the happy few who attended the Republican convention of 1856, in the famous anti-slavery speech that nobody wrote down or took minutes on (I think at Lincoln's request). I think his 1856 speech delineated a political program that was far enough in advance of then-current public opinion to dazzle his closest supporters and make him, within the party, The Man on the subject of ending slavery.
I think he came into office with a program of precipitating a crisis and then driving the crisis to a satisfactory (from his POV) solution. I doubt seriously whether his negotiations during the interregnum were genuine attempts to keep the South in the Union, because he knew he could do ever so much more politically with the South out of the Union and out of the Congress, and that his policy was always a war policy, whose implementation began immediately on his taking office, as shown by the documents turfed up by nolu chan and rustbucket on the other thread.
Disagreeing again, I think this was a "camel's nose" strategy -- of showing the rubes only the camel's nose at first, and only later, to quote gay activist Marshall Kirk on the gay "human rights" agenda, his unsightly derriere.
Race was a hot-button issue in the United States, and I think Lincoln, while he was after 1854 committed to destroying slavery and anything and anyone who supported it, nevertheless was highly aware of the likely response to the idea of massive emancipation throughout the South, much less a brutal war against other Americans to achieve it -- so he took it off the table, until he was ready to impose it.
He may have justified the Emancipation Proclamation in political and diplomatic terms, but I'm still persuaded that it was actually the goal, and not just a tool. The vector in Lincoln's trajectory that pointed toward the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments was too strong to be the byproduct of a Clintonian politics of expedience.