That is true. But they also represent the leadership of the secessionist movement. The godfather of unilateral secession, John Calhoun, I include in that group. Inasmuch as the post-war confederate apologists base their political theories on those developed by Calhoun, it should not come as a surprise that the leading voices for secession, pre-war, as used Calhoun's misguided theories as rationale.
"You, OTOH, are more interesting in vindicating Lincoln, the Rushmore school, and the National Greatness vision of corporatism rampant -- the 'age of combinations', as John D. Rockefeller put it. The age of trusts, and cartels, and rings, and holding companies, and of 'malefactors of great wealth'."
Actually, I see little need to vindicate Lincoln, as history has already adequately done so. Only fringists are interested in slandering Lincoln's legacy (Gay? Syphilitic? Illegitimate? Tyrannical? Megalomaniac? ad nauseum). I am more concerning with exposing the anti-american perfidy of the "neo-confederates."
"I've said before, and I'll repeat it now, that I think Lincoln's platform planks about "containing the expansion of slavery" ... were just so much campaign rhetoric disguising a settled and deadly intention of universal abolition by force if necessary, which I have suggested he first articulated at the Republican convention of 1856 in his famously undocumented address.
I believe you refer to the address Lincoln gave at the Illinois State Republican Party Convention at Bloomington. One website summarizes the main points of his speech, which evidently was not recorded in detail:
"1. That there were pressing reasons for the formation of the Republican Party.
2. That the Republican movement was very important to the future of the nation.
3. All free soil people needed to rally against slavery and the existing political evils.
4. The nation must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts, and the Republicans were the ones to do it."
I think that you do that, in order to deliver what you think is an insult to Calhoun's memory.
He did not advocate secession, but rather worked for the Missouri Compromise. He does not belong in the ranks of the secessionists. His nullification theory was also aimed at preserving the Union and mitigating differences over the Tariff. The doctrine was erroneous and was swept aside. Nevertheless, his motive for offering it wasn't disunion.