Irrepressible Conflict" grew near. Unwilling to accept any further extension of slavery to the territories, the Republican Party was anti-Slavery, but since it and its presidential candidate in 1860 only won with 40 per cent of the vote, it could hardly be said that they had an overwhelming mandate to emancipate the slaves in the South after the war began.
Moreover, Lincoln had serious qualms at that point about the wisdom and legality of such an action. He genuinely found slavery to be abhorrent, yet Randall and Donald say that "no Garrison abolitionists, Lincoln shared some of the Southern attitudes toward the Negro." He had seriously considered proposals to colonize blacks in west Africa; and would have preferred to have been able to offer gradual compensation. At the outset of the war, he was concerned lest any emancipation program induce wavering border states to join the Confederacy. In his inaugural address, he assured the South he had no desire to tamper with slavery in those states in which it already existed. The compromise Crittenden Resolution
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