Moment of Battle

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-09-2016, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...All in all I have my theory on what Abraham Lincoln was up to in 1861. He was going to abolish slavery, and he would have used the British model which had worked in the vast British Empire and would have worked in America. The British bought the slaves their freedom, which is what Congress did in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. The British freed slaves with no bloodshed.  America got a war, most likely over a misunderstanding. But the British freed their slaves in a 2T; Lincoln would have freed slaves without war in a 4T. Lincoln's timing was wrong.

I have far more often seen an account saying that during the early days Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union.  If he could have won an early victory the slaves might not have been freed.  The abolitionists were very disgusted with Lincoln's handling of the war and its goals prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.  As the war became longer and deadlier Lincoln shifted positions as much for political reasons as moral.  He ran for president on a platform of not ending slavery where it already existed, but preventing it from spreading westward into new territory.  Of course containment was problematic from the southern perspective.  If all new states were free, the south would in time lose control of Congress and abolition was apt to come.