But the 13th passed while Lincoln was alive, and he was arguably the most involved person in getting it pushed through.
If you want to get technical, yes, the EP didn't free any slaves, and the 13th was passed by Republicans and Democrats in the House.
I think you're trying to demonize Lincoln and the Union, and in doing so, you are trying too hard to shoe-horn technicalities into an argument that turns American history on it's head.
I am perfectly willing to settle for my opinion that neither side was an less moral than the other. Good and bad in both, because that's how we all really are as people.
A good example of that is Hollywood's examples of male slave owners. They're always the sweaty old drunk fat guy who rapes the young slave girls. In reality, there were laws against that, and any slave owner who did that, would have lot's of trouble socially, at church, and in business because of the distaste for it within southern society.
There are many examples of slaves that were well treated and stayed with their former owners after the war. Junior high school textbooks would not include that.
The 13th was not ratified until several months after his death.
Lincoln was a lunatic that was hell bent to go to war over secession and that was the wrong moral thing to do and it resulted in the deaths of almost a million people, the destruction of scores of American cities and the economic ruin of a third of the country for almost 100 years.
To me Americans should not be killed because they want self determination and freedom. The Union should not be a suicide pact or like the Mafia that when you join you can never get out.
It was not the act of secession that caused the war. That was only a political act. It was Lincoln undoing the secession by force that was the war. It started with Lincoln breaking the fragile truce at Ft Sumter that Buchanan worked so hard to preserve and started in full force when the army crossed the Potomac River to kill Americans and take away their arms. The war was Americans defending their homeland against an invasion.
The issue of slavery was a side show. Lincoln even said in the quote I posted above that it was.
The 13th Amendment was passed by the House on January 31st, 1865.
President Lincoln was shot and killed on April 18th, 1865.
The following states waited till the following dates to retify the amendment
Oregon — December 8, 1865
California — December 19, 1865
Florida — December 28, 1865 (Reaffirmed – June 9, 1869)
Iowa — January 15, 1866
New Jersey — January 23, 1866 (After rejection – March 16, 1865)
Texas — February 18, 1870
Delaware — February 12, 1901 (After rejection – February 8, 1865)
Kentucky — March 18, 1976[81] (After rejection – February 24, 1865)
Mississippi — March 16, 1995; Certified – February 7, 2013[82] (After rejection – December 5, 1865)
Would Lincoln needed to have lived till March 1995 for you to give him any credit for freeing the slaves?
Lincoln was most likely clinically depressed, and Mary Todd Lincoln was surely bipolar or had borderline personality disorder. Lincoln said before the war, that "the Union is perpetual and older than the Federal Constitution", but also had to deal with an obligation to preserve the Union. Lincoln wrote consistenly about how he was "horrified and deeply remorseful at the Civil War's great cost". When blame for the cost of the war was handed out, Lincoln was the first to admit that he deserved some of it.
Shelby Foote put it very well when he said "The Civil War remains as a presence defining both the American nation and the American identity." That identity includes the abolition of slavery over the rights of parts of our nation to continue it.
Would you support secession today? if the olde Confederacy wanted it again?
