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Well, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. To say that the outcome of the Civil War is the result of a cunning plan that Lincoln had ready even before Fort Sumter would, first, fall into the pit of the Great Man theory, and second, downplay the simple but often forgotten fact that Lincoln was but a mere human, who could make mistakes, whose opinions could change and who was as affected by events outside of his control as anybody else. Lincoln himself recognized this, saying that he could not claim to "have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”

Let's start with the campaign of 1860. To our modern eyes and sensibilities, the Republican Party in 1860 seems bitterly disappointing. In a country with more than four million people living as chattel, the goal of simply preventing the further spread of slavery seems small, indeed rather useless. Even if the Free Soil position triumphed, there was no guarantee that this would result in the eventual liberation of the slaves. Lincoln liked to talk of the "ultimate extinction" of slavery, but as Douglas pointed out during their famous debates, Lincoln and the Republicans seemingly had no plan to actually accomplish this. Furthermore, Republicans seem callous White Supremacists, who had no desire to improve the condition of the Negro or imbue his eventual liberty with any kind of meaning. Lincoln himself disclaimed any pretension to free the slaves immediately or grant them equality, and he admitted that the ultimate extinction of slavery would not come until at least a century after the debates - meaning, the 1950's.

But these electoral declarations, made partly out of the prejudices from which even Lincoln wasn't free, partly to appease the very racist electorate of Illinois, conceal the radical philosophy and egalitarian fundations of the Republican Party as a political organization. It's true that law and custom restricted the action of the Republicans, and with the exception of non-political abolitionists such as Garrison (who denounced the Constitution and the Union itself), even the most Radical Republicans did not believe that they could abolish slavery in the states. But the Republican Party was founded upon two great ideas, radical positions in an era when the Negro was seen as little more than an object: first, that Black people are humans, entitled to the sacred rights of liberty and property, and thus that slavery was morally wrong; and that Freedom was National, while Slavery was Sectional, and thus the Federal government had a duty to assail and contain slavery.

It's difficult to understand just how radical these positions where unless we compare them with the positions of the Democrats, both North and South. Douglas and his men engaged in a "care not" policy, which did not particularly love slavery, but detested the Negro and denied him any humanity or rights. He accused Lincoln of thinking "that the Negro is his brother" and declared that "I do not think that the Negro is any kin of mine at all. ... I believe that this government of ours was founded, and wisely founded, upon the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity, to be executed and managed by white men." Douglas and his men, simply put, rejected any moral consideration of the slavery question, rejected the humanity of Blacks, and rejected the mere idea that slavery was important enough to risk the security of the Union.

The views of the South are clear enough. For them, slavery was a political, social and economic blessing, and the Negro was nothing more than an object, human chattel that could never be the equal of the White man. Southern society was built on and sustained by White Supremacy. This helps explain why so many Whites who did not hold any slaves and could not hope to buy any the future fought and died for the Confederacy. For them, a Republican victory signified a threat to White Supremacy and Slavery, and they could never allow that. Painfully aware of the fact that slavery as threatened by the Enlightenment ideals and the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Southerners clung to the vain hope that slavery could be perpetuated. There is actually rather heavy debate over whether slaves could be used industrially, but the simple fact was that Southern culture and economy was built upon the plantation of sugar, rice and cotton, and that efforts to industrialize had failed. Slavery had to expand to survive, and the Free Soil and Freedom National ideas of the Republicans would not allow it to.

The election of Lincoln represented the triumph of the Northern vision, a government where slavery was confined to a few states and was continually assailed and attacked, and was ultimately forced into extinction. Even if it took decades, Southerners recognized that the Republican position was an existential threat to slavery. The position of the Republicans is thus radically opposed to that of the Democrats, for the Republicans construed the Constitution in an anti-slavery manner, which would allow them to attack slavery in the states without breaking the Constitutional barriers that protected it. Lincoln probably wouldn't have gone as far as the Radicals suggested, but his election represented the final divorce of the Federal government from the Slave Power.

Thus, before the Civil War, Republicans opposed slavery as something that was wrong, a moral problem that had to be met and settled, and developed a Constitutional theory that allowed them to attack slavery, contain it, and assure its extinction in the future. They defended the basic dignity and rights of Black Americans, and although it is true that many Republicans were prejudiced themselves, and that most were not ready to afford equality to them, Republicanism was characterized by its recognition of the humanity of Blacks. But their ideology came into direct conflict with their love of the Union, since the South, feeling threatened, would secede if a Party build on the premise that slavery is wrong was elected. It was difficult to conciliate these two beliefs, that slavery was wrong and that the Union had to be preserved, especially for a moderate like Lincoln, but in 1860 Lincoln did not ran simply on the conservation of the Union, but his was an anti-slavery campaign. Frederick Douglass recognized this, saying that a Lincoln victory "must and will be hailed as an anti-slavery triumph." And when Lincoln was elected, Charles Francis Adams declared joyously that "The great revolution has actually taken place. . . . The country has once and for all thrown off the domination of the Slaveholders."

Thus, even when Lincoln himself was completely against anti-slavery, denouncing it as a "monstrous injustice", he had to conciliate this belief with the fact that the Constitution he admired protected slavery, and that the Union he cherished included Slaveholders. He was a moderate, who recognized these facts, and thus sought not to alienate the South and assure them that he would not break the Constitution and respect slavery where it already existed. This was necessary to carry the lower North, states like Illinois and Pennsylvania where an abstract opposition to slavery combined with a concrete hate of the Negro and fear of Civil War. The Republicans needed these states to win, and an all-out abolitionist campaign couldn't have carried them. But make no mistake, Lincoln was against slavery, and his campaign was an anti-slavery one. In their recognition of the humanity of Black Americans and their denunciation of slavery as a wrong, the Republicans took a Radical position that the South simply could not accept. The Republicans, they themselves admitted, represented a threat to slavery. If they simple were White Supremacists without any substantive difference from them, they wouldn't have felt the need to secede. They recognized that the election of Lincoln represented the triumph of anti-slavery was the guiding principle of the government, and thus, to protect slavery and White Supremacy, they seceded from the Union.

Thus, before the Civil War, Lincoln's decisions did form a cohesive plan that would allow him and the Republican Party to attack slavery and place it in the road to ultimate extinction without breaking the Constitution or destroying the Union. He did not denounce slavery directly in order to carry the "doubtful states", but his election did mark the triumph of political anti-slavery. However, secession and Civil War changed these plans.