Lincoln’s position had become more radical, not less, since the start of the war. The fact is that Lincoln always wanted to minimize the aftershock of the bloodshed of the civil war. The fact also is that by the end of the war, Lincoln had increasingly embraced a position that African-Americans had a stake in the polity and aftermath of the war as well, and was willing to endorse increased Federal involvement to ensure that.

Lincoln wasn’t the most radical of the Republicans, but he also was far from ‘going soft’.