Existing comment:
My enemies pretend that I am now carrying on the war for the sole purpose of abolition.
So long as I am president, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the Union.
Interview with Alexander Randall, Washington, DC, August 19, 1864
Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, but he was still working to convince people in the North that the Civil War was being fought for the principle of Union, not the abolition of slavery. |