Emancipation was a war measure serving Union preservation, not a moral crusade.

Evidence

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery,” Lincoln replied in Greeley’s rival paper, Washington’s National Intelligencer. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 586

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to testing the reader’s goal: whether policy (saving Union) preceded racial ideas (emancipation as means), rather than ideas driving policy. Supporting the causal inversion claim. — connects to: Slavery is a continuing state of war, not a legitimate compact — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 32