A few points about above posts. The partially quoted letter to Horace Greeley ended with, "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free. Someone inferred Andrew Jackson supported secession. Nothing could be farther from the truth. "The Constitution... forms a government not a league... To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation." He was ready to go to war with South Carolina over it. Lincoln's position on the war was to save the union. The south had seceded to save slavery. The reason being that slavery was going to be prohibited in new territories so as states were added the south would lose its slavery-anti-slavery balance in congress. The Emancipation was a carrot to get the south back. Come back or lose your slaves. When it went to effect, it did free some slaves. Slaves in the areas of the confederacy then under union control. Most of the other stuff posted on here is hogwash.