Comment: The Great Irony of Lincoln ...

... is that he is championed as the great defender of human rights, while the reality is that his actions showed that he didn't give a damn about human rights.

Also by 1860, every European country had already outlawed slavery (peacefully). There is no question the institution of slavery, which had existed for thousands of years, was already on its way out. There certainly was no need to fight a war over slavery, from Lincoln's perspective.

It was all about centralization of power, as his ideological hero was Henry Clay, and Clay's hero was Alexander Hamilton, the man at the Constitutional Convention who wanted a monarchy installed in the USA.