In retrospect, it was the wrong call.
The right call would have been to recognize their right to secede, then go to war over the slavery issue anyway.
Likely the south would have gone ahead and abolished slavery, and reunited with the north twenty years later (by which time slavery had been rendered un viable by the progression of the industrial revolution.)
“The right call would have been to recognize the right to seceed, then go to war anyway...”
You too seem woefully misinformed.
The fact is that neither outgoing “Dough-faced” Democrat President Buchanan nor incoming “Black Republican” President Lincoln acknowledged a “right to seceed” at pleasure.
They believed there had to be a constitutionally justifiable reason, which did not exist in 1860 or early 1861.
But neither president took military actions to stop secession until after the Confederacy first provoked, then started and then formally declared war on the United States.
As for Confederates supposedly abolishing slavery on their own, the historical fact is that they preferred death for themselves to freedom for their slaves.