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Lincoln wasn't the benevolent emancipator we honor him as today. His first and foremost goal was to preserve the Union, and one of his famous quotes went something like, "if I could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, I would". The Emancipation Proclamation was issued more to punish the Confederacy than help the slaves.
Lincoln was also a bigot if not an outright racist privately. His hope was that most of the slaves would return to Africa after the war. He had very mixed feelings on whether blacks could ever assimilate into society, and together with General McClelland, was vehemently opposed to using black troops in combat. His opinion of their fighting attributes was not very high, to say the least.
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