Lincoln is credited for having evolved in his views by many. After a failed attempt to export freedmen to Cow Island off of Haiti, he accepted he could not remove free Black people and was resigned to making them fit. I have no reason to think he ever saw Black people as social and intellectual equals. Frederick Douglass said the Lincoln was the white man's President.

These were not the views of children but mature adults. You can make a case that George Wallace mellowed after he was paralyzed. You're welcome to present me some evidence that any of these people matured and changed and I'll be happy to write about it.

https://medium.com/the-polis/abraham-lincoln-americas-colonizer-in-chief-9d108ebe30a