[philwelch]

You may be shocked to hear this, but Lincoln was a politician and was occasionally slightly disingenuous in order to achieve his political agenda. There wasn't public support for a war to end slavery. There was public support for a war to preserve the union.

Here's another quote from Lincoln:

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

He could claim as much as he wanted, once the war started, that his goal was to restore the Union even at the expense of continuing to tolerate slavery, but there was no way the Confederates could possibly take him at his word when he said so.