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.
The men, flawed as they were, who broke away from Great Britain, had a moral basis for the break, one which, because of its intrinsic moral power, eventually persuaded the world.
The Confederacy had an immoral basis, one which unsurprisingly therefore lacked the moral power to convince anybody in the end.
Even you, I would suppose, support the sort of moral, constitutional, republican self-government to which the founders aspired, and oppose chattel slavery. Don’t you?
But Lincoln never launched a "war of invasion" until after the Confederacy had for months:
Bottom line: no Confederate troops were directly killed by any Union force, and no Confederate state invaded by any Union army until after the Confederacy provoked war, started war, formally declared war and sent aid to Confederates in a Union state.
So Lincoln only did what his constitutional duty required -- he defeated the military power which attempted to destroy the United States by force.