[x]

I’ve been reading and listening to books about Lincoln for some time now, and I’m really curious what incidents in his past you think would have led the South to this conclusion.

I suspect jeffdem is moving the image Southerners had of Lincoln during and after the war back to the beginning of his term. Early opinion of Lincoln focused on him as crude and as a mediocre unknown. Once Lincoln issued a call for troops, though, the meme of "tyrant Abe" was begun, and his opponents could fit every criticism they had of his various policies into that picture.

[Sherman Logan]

That’s pretty much what I suspected. Everybody underestimated Abe in the beginning. Even his own cabinet thought they could manipulate and control him. One of the most interesting things about Lincoln is that all but one of these men eventually became his devoted supporters.