repeated his reasoning for war was to not abolish slavery, but to completely save the Union. Thus, the war had not begun due to slave soil and free soil, but it was a war for the Union, with slaveholders on both sides, and proslavery supporters in the North. In Abraham Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley in 1862, Lincoln stated he believed the Union could be saved without destroying slavery. To calm the northern anti-slavery forces, Abraham Lincoln used his constitutional powers to issue what is known as the Emancipation Proclamation, which slowly freed slaves who presided in rebellious states, but he did not issue the Emancipation to the border states, which he did to ultimately keep them from succeeding from the Union. These Border States were important to winning the war, because of their location and population. (Abraham Lincoln: Struggle for Union and Emancipation 2016) …show more content…
First, he believed that the United States Constitution prevented the president from seizing the property of the country's citizens without due process. Second, Lincoln feared alienating the residents of the Border States, slave states that had remained in the Union. These people included residents of Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, and Maryland. If these states seceded from the Union and joined with the Confederacy, it would have severely impacted the Union’s war effort. Lincoln wanted to solidify the North's control over these slaveholding states before acting against slavery. Third, Lincoln realized that many white Southerners and Northerners would not support slavery's termination, because it might result in social equality for African-Americans in the United