I am re-reading Shelby Foote's Trilogy. Mainly to remember the book I read three or four years ago but to pick up pieces I missed.

Lincoln was a manipulator, he would play down abolitionism to those States and people he wished to keep on his side while all the while staying on his abolishment of slavery.

The speech I posted was made in 1859, before he was nominated. Now the Greeley letter is dated 1862. The Union was second on his list of goals, slavery his first, but he had to keep Greeley and the Anti-Negro people going his way,,,,