It's apropos that you use Hitler's absurdities to validate your own.
Destroying American union would have destroyed much more than was lost in the Civil War. Lincoln's only goal was preservation of the union - the country itself. If you want to cast blame for those who died in the Civil War, blame the Confederates who started it.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we may take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
- President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg address
http://www.fightthebias.com/Resources/Hist_Docs/Speeches/lincoln_getty.htm
What are my "absurdities"?
Destroying American union would have destroyed much more than was lost in the Civil War
In light of how much was lost in the Civil War...what exactly would have been lost had the southern states been permitted to leave peacefully?
If you want to cast blame for those who died in the Civil War, blame the Confederates who started it.
Now that is absurd...the choice to wage war was entirely the north's
As to the Gettysburg Address...the underlying message was laughable considering the context of the times...as you note, Lincoln's only goal was preservation of the union...evidenced by the fact that he suported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Corwin Amendment (that was introduced in the Senate by William Seward).
So, when Lincoln said that we were engaged in a great civil war testing whether a nation conceived in libery and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure...that was a lie. Early on, Lincoln very much hoped that he could induce the southern states to stay in the union by offering to assist in the subjugation of blacks in the south
Were Lincoln honest in that speech about what the Civil War was about...he would have said something more along the lines of what Hitler said on the subject of federalism in Mein Kampf
Absolutely not so. At one point, it was his primary goal. But Lincoln realized from well before his inauguration that slavery was THE issue.\
Read the "Cooper Union Speech" that put Lincoln on the map as a serious candidate.