Lincoln was also a white supremacist at the time he freed the slaves. But he freed them because he believed in America's founding values.

So IE Lincoln believed black people were an inferior race, but he believed they have rights too.

Meeting Frederick Douglass and seeing black people fight valiantly for their country in the civil war, changed Lincoln's outlook on black people and convinced him that they have more potential than he thought.

Linconl's views on race gradually changed for the rest of his life, until the day he died.