No, it wasn’t. Copyright was originally intended to protect the publishers of a work. It was later transformed to nominally focus on the creators, but even this was lobbied for by publishers in their own self-interest after the old law directly protecting them was allowed to lapse, and because it still had the same net effect since realizing value meant licensing to a publisher in most practical cases, so the publishers were still major beneficiaries.
And, of course, US copyrights under the Constitution do not exist for the purpose of protecting creators, instead a private benefit for creators is a mechanism but the purpose is expressly to “promote the progress of science of useful arts”.
