Yeah, but only after he promised to protect slavery for all-time in his Inaugural Address. The Emancipation Proclamation was Lincoln's "last card" that was played after the Union had lost several major battles in the early stages of the war. His pro-tariff platform evaporated in less than two years after being elected. There is much more to that history lesson than is ever taught in school.

Why do you think they only focus on the Lincoln/Douglass debates? It's because slavery is made the issue while they were in a state that cared about that. I dare anyone to look into Lincoln's other speeches that took place in states that cared more about a railroad being built than slavery. The truth is that we humans tend to generalize about many things, and it causes us to believe a distorted reality that clever historians have put together.