Why did Abraham Lincoln want to abolish slavery?

Abraham Lincoln did not have initial plans to end slavery

Question: Why did Abraham Lincoln want to abolish slavery?
Position‹2 of 2: For political power
Argument‹2 of 3›: Abraham Lincoln did not have initial plans to end slavery

When voting into the Presidency in 1861, Abraham Lincoln did not have plans to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln did not want equal rights for Black and white people

The argument

This argument holds that Lincoln's reputation as the president who set out to end slavery does not match what he intended on taking office. Abraham Lincoln did not plan on ending slavery when he was elected President, and was unsure of how to do so even after he was elected — which matters, because a policy arrived at under wartime pressure is explained differently from one pursued as a founding purpose. His own stated views are offered as evidence of the limits of his commitment. Lincoln did not want Black people and white people to have the same social and political rights. He felt that slavery was morally wrong, but moral disapproval is not the same as a programme for abolition, and he did not believe the Constitution offered the federal government the power to end it for all states. On that reading his position was that slavery was wrong and that he lacked the authority to end it — a combination which produces no plan of action. The Emancipation Proclamation is then reinterpreted in the same light. Far from being Lincoln's means of ending slavery, this argument holds it was a way for his administration to appease both the Northern abolitionists and the Southern slaveholders — a measure calibrated to hold a fracturing coalition together rather than a general act of abolition. The timing supports the reading. Lincoln did not end slavery until the very end of his presidency, which is late for a purpose supposedly held from the start and consistent with a decision reached when circumstances required it. If the aim was not abolition from the outset, the argument concludes, then the motive for what he eventually did must be sought elsewhere — in political power rather than in a plan formed before taking office.

Premises

[P1]Lincoln did not enter office with a plan to abolish slavery and believed the Constitution did not grant the federal government power to end it nationwide. [P2] The Emancipation Proclamation functioned as a political compromise to appease Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders, not as a principled effort to end slavery. [P3] Lincoln did not act decisively against slavery until the very end of his presidency, when political circumstances required it. [C] Therefore, Lincoln's moves against slavery were driven by political power and expediency rather than an initial commitment to abolition.

Counter-arguments

Abraham Lincoln did have plans to end slavery. The problem for Abraham Lincoln was not his goal of ending slavery, but of how to without inciting more chaos and rebellion during the Civil War.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The constitutional point is accurate but tells the other way: holding that the federal government lacked power over slavery in the existing states while campaigning to bar its extension is a considered legal position, not evidence that the opposition was insincere. [Rejecting P2] The Proclamation cannot have been designed to appease Southern slaveholders — it applied only to territory then in rebellion, was denounced across the Confederacy, and made emancipation a Union war aim, which cost support rather than winning it. [Rejecting P3] "Not until the very end" understates the record: the preliminary Proclamation was issued in September 1862, abolition was made a plank of the 1864 platform, and Lincoln pressed the Thirteenth Amendment through the House in January 1865.