The question is at the bottom please answer?

Lincoln did not free the slaves because he thought blacks and whites should be politically equal, but he didn't necessarily think blacks should be enslaved, either. He did it to break the economy of the South and bring the southern states back into the Union. The South thought that, because Lincoln was a Republican, he was also an abolitionist. They were wrong. Lincoln was neither an abolitionist nor did he believe he had the Constitutional power to free the slaves. He was only able to do it during time of war, and he did it hoping to bring the blacks north into the Union army, and cripple southern crop production and trade, and the Proclamation only applied to those blacks in states that had ceceded from the Union.