In the debates, as any strong politician, he stands strong to what he believes in. Lincoln was very much against slavery and spoke out against the Kansas-Nebraska Act that Douglas used to repeal the Missouri Compromise which banned slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. In this quote Lincoln shows his disgust for slavery:
"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions..."
But by the end of the Civil War, Lincoln's main goal was to win and try to make peace with the south and reunite the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation DID NOT end slavery, but it allowed any slave the already was living in the north or had fled to the north to automatically be free. If Lincoln officially ended slavery in the whole Union, the south would not have tried to make peace with the north even after the north won the war. As a president, you have to make tough choices that is good for the whole, and even though in his heart he hated slavery, he had to take the right steps in order for the north to win the war and to bring the Union together.
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