Very well done, Walter!

You're absolutely spot on regarding the degree to which Lost Cause advocates cherry-pick events & quotes to twist history. Lincoln's genius was to understand first things first: Nothing positive comes for the country, the union or the slaves unless the union remains whole. Obviously to use federal power to free slaves in the border states would be to lose their key contributions & certainly lose the war itself.

Unfortunately it's not just neo-Confederates who make these arguments. Many anti-racist authors, here & in the wider media, cited these & other statements (e.g. Lincoln's statements during the Lincoln-Douglas debates or Lincoln's early preference for colonization of freed slaves) to argue that neither Lincoln nor the federal forces had any interests in actually freeing black people & thus ought not be viewed as saviors, but rather as having narrowly defined interests that included maintaining white supremacy.

Why? Perhaps some tire of the "white savior" motif. Perhaps to strengthen the contemporary argument in favor of reparations (much as conservative Jews & AIPOC followers continue to argue total abandonment of European Jews by the WWII Allies to rationalize some of Israel's less defensible policies towards Palestinians in Gaza & the West Bank). However useful these arguments might be today they don't entitle users to distort history.