@dneary wrote
I'm not trying to sugar-coat Lincoln, but he did not support the institution of slavery.
He allowed it. Is it morally worse denying something is evil, or admitting it's evil but letting it happen anyway for political convenience? (Leave that one to the philosophers.)
You can call Lincoln's actions a "trade-off" or "compromise," but an exchange where he got all the benefit while Black people bore all the cost — often on their very bodies — was nothing admirable. So let's at least stop making a hero out of him.
p.s. The Civil War was definitely about preserving slavery for the South, as you rightly point out, but the North didn't want war and would have been quite content to muddle forward with the status quo. They started fighting only because the Confederacy forced their hand by declaring independence and then attacking Fort Sumter.