Lincoln was indeed an abolitionist. But not nearly as radical as some hoped. Above all else, he was a politician - one who understood patience, longsuffering, and timing.
The Republican Party was decidedly an anti-slavery party. Lincoln secured the nomination by running as a moderate which was much more palpable than his radical cohorts. So it makes sense that he did not come into office raising hell and stamping out slavery as his main cause. Lincoln was able to push the Republican platform through Congress including the Free Soil Act.
His first inaugural address shows where he was at politically in 1861, but it does not reflect where his heart was. The political winds for ending slavery were simply not there in 1861. But they would be half a decade later.
This from his first inaugural address:
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that ``I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.'' Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves, and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.''
I now reiterate these sentiments: and in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause---as cheerfully to one section, as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
``No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.''
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution---to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, ``shall be delivered up,'' their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him, or to others, by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath shall go unkept, on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well, at the same time, to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarranties that ``The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all previleges and immunities of citizens in the several States?''
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:389?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
The greatest mistake the Left makes in assessing history is that they do so from a 21st century viewpoint. For Lincoln to do what John Fremont would have done and abolished slavery in his first day in office would have been suicide, both naturally and politically. Instead, he was dealt a shitty deck of cards and played them to the best of his ability.
Lincoln can be judged on a lot of things - expansion of government, tariffs, the handling of the War of Secession, slavery, etc. But his greatest contribution to our Republic and to the world was the preservation of our Union. He shouldn't be judged from a 21st century mindset of modern sensibilities. He should be judged from the political realities of 1860.
