What Were Lincoln's Goals

For Lincoln the South had broken covenant and started an insurrection. In essence, Lincoln, like George Washington in the Whiskey Rebellion or Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s, brought unification to all US citizens; Northerners and Southerners But Lincoln’s goal was not galvanized by equality, though he did detest slavery, Blacks were (at least at first) a secondary issue. Blacks were mobilized as a military need. Emancipation, Lincoln saw, would further undermine the Confederacy while providing the Union with a new source of manpower to crush the rebellion. Lincoln goal was to change the government from states to a union in order to keep the United States from dissolving (Wills 161).
However, Lincoln was against a strong foe. So when historians