As more or less outlined in the 2012 movie "Lincoln", give Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) credit for the 13th Amendment (abolition of slavery) as no one else had the equivalent guts, charm, smarts, and resolve to get that done. However, give credit to Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) and the radical Republicans for the 14th and 15th Amendments, which granted the freed slaves full equality under the law (citizenship and voting, specifically). Stevens was actually in a relationship with an African American woman, and in the movie had to give up his notion of full equality as a compromise for the 13th Amendment. The movie was not clear whether Lincoln was playing compromise politics in not initially supporting full equality. Lincoln could well have been part of an evolution of thought that supported freedom but not "equal protection", but then why would the man have given his life and everything he stood for (when most others weren't) to support what he must have known was a path to full equality?