Why didn't he call for a Northern victory?!? Are you kidding, Lincoln wanted a victory as much as anyone else in the north, and he tended to have to remove the generals in charge of the Army of the Potomac because they were costing him victories.
If he didn't, it would have been because he refused to acknowledge that the country was at war against an adversary--the Confederates weren't enemies to be defeated so much as rebellious fellow-citizens with whom it was the country's objective to reunite.
