I share your outrage about the plaque attacks. But out-of-context quotes, selective quoting, and baseless assumption of motives? That's a no-no. Here is one example: You write that "Abraham Lincoln's famous wartime Emancipation Proclamation failed to free a single slave and didn't even apply to the slaves held by Yankees in Yankee-held holdings." Well, Lincoln was a rule-of-law guy most of the time. He knew he had no authority under the Constitution to free all slaves by executive order. It would take the 13th amendment to do that. However, as commander-in-chief, he did have considerable martial-law authority over Union-controlled areas of the South. The EP freed all slaves in those areas. Many Confederate political leaders and large slaveowners in border areas panicked and demanded that nearby Confederate army commanders provide security to prevent mass slave runaways. As intended, it was fairly disruptive to Confederate military operations in those areas. Also, Lincoln was barely able to keep the North united in the War effort. Focusing too much on the slavery issue was politically dangerous because the North was deeply divided on abolition. In fact, abolitionist New England was ready to secede years before the South was!

Another example: You have part of the famous from a Lincoln letter to Horace Greeley "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave [or just some of the slaves], I would do it..." Again, slavery was not a "winning" issue in the North. Preserving the Union was.

Lincoln hated slavery (his personal writings prove that), but his job as President was to preserve the Union. He was comforted by the realization that preserving the Union, i.e., defeating the Confederacy, would eventually free all the slaves. As he wrote in that same letter to Greeley: "I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free."

Some historians (and maybe you) believe that Lincoln was opposed to slavery solely for political expediency. I think the preponderance of the evidence is that it was the other way around.