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You might want to read WEB Dubois's "Black Reconstruction." Abraham Lincoln found it difficult to conceive of the Black race as equal or free. He finally freed the slaves because without them the Civil War could not be won by the North. At the time, there was no legal Draft Law, and northern workers were refusing to fight because they saw the freed slaves as competitors for their jobs. At the time, escaped slaves were already raising food for army camps on the border states, like Virginia, etc. Unlike white workers the slaves had a definite stake in fighting in the Civil War. Lincoln's drafting of the Declaration which freed the slaves happened because slaves could, and would, and did, fight. Lincoln did not free them, they freed themselves, because without them, the Civil War would not have been won, and Lincoln knew this.
The war was about the expansion of northern industrialism, as opposed to the expansion of slavery into the west which the immigrant "Land-Grabbers" certainly did not want. With the exception of the abolitionists around the country, neither side, north, or south cared much about the plight of the slaves. Like all wars,the Civil War, at its heart, was about profit; the slave issue erupted because their freedom or continued bondage had a lot to do with how much profit could be made, and what kind (agrarian or capitalist)it was going to be.
And as far as who killed Lincoln's grandfather not having a so-called bearing on Lincoln's freeing of the slaves, it just shouldn't have. Lincoln should have been glad, as should all voluntary "immigrants" and their families, descendants, etc., who came to America and literally "took over" that Blacks and Native Americans, right now, today, are still not moved to pick them off one by one, and that as long as we're not doing that they should consider themselves blessed.
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