“If the Confederacy were truly “no threat”, then Lincoln would have no need to “trample” anything.”
If Poland were truly “no threat” to the Soviet Union, then Stalin would have no need to “trample” anything in 1939.
See if you can find a fallacy in this kind of thinking.
Two totally different situations and people involved, not comparable in any way.
In the American context, we have the example of Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt trampling on the rights of over 100,000 Japanese-American civilians.
The US Supreme Court, many years later, ruled it to have been unlawful, but at the time FDR's actions were justified as a necessity of war.
That is the proper context to view any of Lincoln's alleged "trampling", none of which was ever officially rebuked by either Congress or the Supreme Court.