Why did Abraham Lincoln want to abolish slavery?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Why did Abraham Lincoln want to abolish slavery?
Position‹2 of 2: For political power
Argument‹3 of 3: Emancipation was a military policy

Abraham Lincoln did not want to emancipate all Black people and slaves at once. Abraham Lincoln feared further Southern rebellion if slaves were unanimously freed and issued the Emancipation Proclamation in a military attempt to appease both the Northern abolitionist and Southern slave holders.

The argument

Proponents of this reading treat the Emancipation Proclamation as an instrument of war rather than a declaration of principle. The Abraham Lincoln administration issued it while the Civil War was already raging, and on this account its purpose was to weaken the Confederacy and shift public perception of the conflict — that is, to help the Northern Union win — rather than to establish Black equality as a matter of right. The scope of the Proclamation is central to the argument. It did not end slavery in the Southern states, because those states had seceded from the Union and no longer fell under its law; a proclamation addressed to territory the government did not control could not, by itself, free anyone living there. What such a measure could do was strategic: it changed the stated terms of the war, redefined what a Union victory would mean, and put the Confederacy's labour system in question at a moment when the outcome was still undecided. This is read alongside Lincoln's own approach to the question. He viewed emancipation as a gradual progress rather than a single abolishing act, which proponents take as evidence that the Proclamation marked a step calibrated to circumstance rather than the fulfilment of a fixed moral commitment. On that basis the argument concludes that the Proclamation's true purpose was not to end slavery or to fight for Black lives and equality, but to serve the Union's military position — and that Lincoln's move against slavery is therefore better explained by the pursuit of political and strategic power than by moral conviction alone.

Premises

[P1]The Emancipation Proclamation was issued as a wartime measure that did not free enslaved people in the seceded Southern states, which were beyond the reach of Union law. [P2] Its aim was to weaken the Confederacy and shift public perception of the war rather than to end slavery or advance Black equality, and Lincoln himself treated emancipation as a gradual process. [C] Emancipation was a military policy, indicating Lincoln acted for political and strategic power rather than moral conviction alone.

Counter-arguments

The Emancipation Proclamation changed the tide of the war from an economic one to a moral one. The moral issue of slavery took front and center of the war and incited more enthusiasm and fervor for Union soldiers to fight and abolish slavery as a means of winning the war. In this way, the Emancipation Proclamation was much more than a military policy, but it changed the tide of the war and gave it a named purpose. The Emancipation Proclamation was also a major step in eradicating US slavery and racism.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise misstates what the Proclamation did: it applied precisely to the seceded states, exempting the loyal border states and Union-occupied areas, and it took effect as Union armies advanced — so rather than being a nullity in the South, it was the instrument by which large numbers of people were freed there. [Rejecting P2] That a measure served military ends does not establish it was only that, since the same order authorised Black enlistment and made abolition a declared war aim; and "gradual" describes a view of how emancipation should proceed, not evidence that political advantage rather than conviction was the motive.