Lincoln was a pretty standard Whig politician that God in His providence forced into a moral corner. He did the same thing with the whole country, in His good time.
Reading Lincoln’s speeches carefully you can discern the slow but steady transformation, from the pre-war quotes - quite egregious to our modern ear - laid out in the article above, into this, from his second inaugural adddress:
“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Those are the wise words of a changed, much more mature, much deeper, man. War is hell, and those who go through it are not the same when they come out as when they went in.
And of course, his refined-by-fire eloquence finally reached its zenith in his immortal address at Gettysburg.
By the way, Thomas Jefferson foresaw the bitter fruit of the compromise of the founders on the matter of chattel slavery that would have to be eaten by their grandchildren, and he issued the stern warning that today is inscribed on his memorial in the national capital:
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
What will be the destructive fruit of our generation’s surrender of equal protection for innocent babies, and the abandonment of marriage and the natural family?
Time will tell, but it ain’t gonna be pretty or fun.
And that they explicitly serve his self interest at this juncture is merely a coincidence. Had he been so very much against slavery to the extent that he thinks it justifies a war of invasion, he should have said so at the beginning of the war, not after having expended 600,000 lives, and laid waste to entire regions and families, and having to justify the bloodshed with some ex post facto faked up moral rationalization.
This is Bill Clinton stuff. Almost two years into the war, he's still talking about Keeping slavery if the South would just stop fighting his invasion.
And of course, his refined-by-fire eloquence finally reached its zenith in his immortal address at Gettysburg.
You mean where he cited that slave owning secessionist movement that broke away from a Union "four score and seven years ago..." ?
Rather hypocritical, don't you think, when you are playing the role of a King George III, but to a more Insane degree?
Again, Bill Clinton stuff.
By the way, Thomas Jefferson foresaw the bitter fruit of the compromise of the founders on the matter of chattel slavery that would have to be eaten by their grandchildren, and he issued the stern warning that today is inscribed on his memorial in the national capital:
But not to the extent that he would free his own slaves. This was a sort of "Do as I say, Not as I do" sort of thing.