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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Abolition was clearly in the Republican platform but he was chosen as a moderate candidate in the convention vs some more firebrand candidates, in the hope that he would forestall war. This is not controversial -- you can read accounts of the convention in old newspapers.

The famous quote from Lincoln shows where his priorities lay: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/archives/a-letter-from-pr...

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In addition he didn’t address slavery until relatively late in the war; when he did it was as a (failed) tactic to flip rebelling states and excepted slave states like Maryland and Delaware that remained in the union.

This is flat wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in late 1862, the second year of the war when things were very much in doubt. Lincoln issued it in the wake of the major battle at Antietam, which was a brutal "tie" and the deadliest day in American history. The tactical purpose of the Proclamation to try to recapture the momentum and make it clear that the North was now on a path of total war with the South.

I apologize: “relatively late” draws a misleading conclusion. I really meant that it wasn’t a precipitating or contemporary part of the beginning of the war, the primary objective of which (from his policy — obviously many supported it for other reasons) was the preservation of the union.

The rest of your comment speaks to my point: it was a tactical effort to try to split the confederacy but as far as I can tell failed in that effort. It only had “force” in the parts of the country not controlled by the federal government.

Fortunately actual emancipation was ultimately extended throughout the union, at least in theory.

Here’s what the national archive has to say on the subject; in particular the second paragraph speaks to the limited scope of the directive: https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancip...

It should be said that he urged compensated emancipation in the states not seceded. He did justify this by comparing the cost of that emancipation to the cost of the war. But in his statements in general he was very clear that he thought slavery wrong.

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