Civil War Abolition

At the start of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln cautiously framed the conflict about the preservation of the Union rather than the ending of slavery. Personally he found the practice of slavery revolting; but he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a reason to go to war. However by mid-1862, thousands of slaves fled to join the attacking Northern armies, Lincoln was convinced that abolition had become a sound military strategy.
President Lincoln determined that emancipating slaves in the regions of rebellion that were not under Federal control was “warranted by the Constitution” as “a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” The Confederacy