Les,
Those are excellent points, and I agree with all of them, excepting only that there's evidence Lincoln hadn't stopped supporting trying to deport former slaves after the war.
The extent to which the war itself was "about slavery" however kinds of depends on how one evaluates the causes of the war. What I've read from various sources (including "The Real Lincoln" by Thomas DiLorenzo, which was an excellent book), leads me to the following conclusions:
Q: Was slavery the reason Lincoln started and pursued the war?
Starchild:
“Excepting only that there’s evidence that Lincoln hadn’t stopped supporting the deportation of former slaves after the war”. I am not sure what “evidence” you are referring to. His own speeches and writing suggest that his opinion changed during the war and he became more sensitive to the rights of blacks to remain in the country. However, since he was assassinated just days after the end of the war, we can never know for sure what his policy would have been, had he lived. I don’t know as this makes any difference as to the reason for fighting the war.
I think it is clear that “abolishing” slavery was never Lincoln’s primary objective. He himself said so. He said that preserving the Union was his aim. If could accomplish by freeing no slaves, he would do that; if by freeing some slaves, but not all, he would do that; if by freeing all the slaves, he would do that. He said that he did not plan to abolish slavery where it existed at the time of his election, but that he would not allow slavery’s spread into the territories.
Les
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