Paul problem with Lincoln is his idea of union thru force. If states want to leave, let them. Its their life, their state and they should be allowed to leave as they so please. Just as America left the British Empire
Ol Mad George III ( an earlier Lincoln) didn’t take to much to the idea. Fortunatly we won. Shame they couldn’t have settled on a price to continue the Slave export program which Abe favored over conflict.
The American People never signed on to the British Empire.
They, on the other hand, CREATED the Union along with the means of changing it should it become unsatisfactory.
I believe that if the seceding states held referenda, and by majority vote of all of their residents, both slave and free, voted to secede, the union would have let them go their own way. Of course the states with few slaves, like Virginia, only had a slight white majority for secession, and states where whites were strongly desirous of secession, like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, whites were a minority of the population.