Lincoln issued emancipation as a strategic war measure under military pressure.

Evidence

With the war looking like a never-ending highway, the midterm elections approaching, and runaways crippling Confederates faster than Union bullets, Lincoln gathered his cabinet on September 22, 1862. After laying his poker face on Americans for months, he finally showed his cards—cards William Lloyd Garrison never believed he had. Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. For slaveholding Union states and any rebel state wishing to return, Lincoln once again offered gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization. For those states remaining in rebellion on January 1, 1863, Lincoln proclaimed that “all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 587

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s core test: military/rational self-interest (strategic war calculus) produced emancipation policy first, not an underlying moral commitment. Directly bears on the ignorance-to-hate-to-discrimination reversal.