Yes, it rings false to me as well. I never had the impression, having grown up in the North and reading Fredrick Douglas in high school, that Lincoln was all about Emancipation and freeing slaves. I had always thought it was a practical decision, and one that was done out of strategy and political pressure of some northern whites and blacks pushing to end it. The war was also immensely profitable to northern weapon makers. The military industrial was born from it. Lee was not an honorable slaveholder and neither was Davis. The first amendment of the Confederrate constitution was to protect the right to own slaves, to trreat humans as protperty, and I can not but think of them as the most dishonorable and disgusting of 'Americans': traitors to our country and American values, and enslavers. I'm offended by their statues and the confederate flag. And I'm white. Feigned honor is not real honor; it is but an act of diecept and fake manners. The gentility and politeness southerers have always faked. I lived in the South and saw it first hand.