The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the 36th Congress on March 2, 1861 and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification....
Lincoln did believe that slavery was morally wrong, but there was one big problem: It was sanctioned by the highest law in the land, the Constitution. The nation’s founding fathers, who also struggled with how to address slavery, did not explicitly write the word “slavery” in the Constitution, but they did include key clauses protecting the institution, including a fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause, which allowed Southern states to count slaves for the purposes of representation in the federal government.... etc... etc... etc...
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All this is saying then is when faced with imminent secession Lincoln would have left slavery in place if it would only preserve the Union?
Didn't Lincoln plainly state that his own self in that famous single sentence about preserving the Union?
You should note too that the Corwin Amendment said nothing about allowing slavery into the Territories that were not yet states, THAT ban being a fundamental tenet of Lincoln's election platform..
But, once the bullets were already flying, how was Lincoln's work on the Thirteenth Amendment, AND his reelection platform in '64 NOT about total abolition?
Their motives for doing this, as the platform clearly stated was to once and for all eliminate this fundamental divisive factor from the United States.
Some irony in that both sides agreed...
The Confederates (via Veep Alexander Stephens)....
The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right....and the Lincoln Administration as expressed in their '64 reelection platform....
3. Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion,Birdwatcher
