Why did president Lincoln avoid making emancipation of slaves the main goal of the civil war?

Answer 1

It wasn't his goal at the outset.

Then during Lee's big advance down the Peninsula, he was advised that an Emancipation Proclamation would shame the British and French out of helping the South.

But he could not issue this after a string of Confederate victories, or it would look like a desperate measure. He had to wait for a Union victory, which eventually arrived in September 1862. That was when he issued the Proclamation.

Answer 2

He didn't avoid it.

Slavery within its traditional heartlands was not an issue at the beginning. It was the spread of slavery into the new Western territories that was the sticking point, and Lincoln's refusal to allow this was the final trigger for war.

It was only later that he brought Emancipation into it - chiefly and most urgently to keep the British from helping the Confederates, as they could not be seen to fight for slavery.

Answer 3

He did not avoid it. Like most people in the North, Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, and Northerners did not leap into uniform to kill slavery.

He put Emancipation on the agenda as a tactical war-measure to keep the British from intervening on the side of the Confederates - which they looked as though they were going to. A secondary reason was to give the North a more emotive cause to fight for, when they eventually realized it would be a long war.

Answer 4

He wanted to wait for a Union victory so it wouldn't look like a desperate attempt to win.

Answer 5

He wasn't actually an Abolitionist