Lincoln goes out of his way to assure the slave holding states of the federal government's intention not to interfere with their peculiar institution.
He doesn't even outright reject the right of the states to secede, but insist that it be done in a constitutional framework as was done when the union was organized, not unilaterally.
Had Lincoln's prescription been followed, the entire sorry war may have been avoided.
If the object of Lincoln's first inaugural speech was to promote peace and reconciliation between the two sections of the country, it failed miserably. It has been years since I posted a link to my old thread of how newspapers North and South interpreted the speech. The differences between the responses of the North and South were profound. Here is the link to short excerpts from those old editorials: Lincoln's First Inaugural Speech.
What was Lincoln's objective with that speech? If he were as smart as his supporters think him to be, why was he poking the South in the eye with a stick? Did he not realize how his speech would go over in the South? My interpretation is that he did in fact know how his speech would play in the South. His objective was war, not peace. He wanted to unite the North behind him to force the South back into the "voluntary" Union.
What you read as "poking the South in the eye with a stick", I read as a reasonable prescription to avoid war. We know how doing things your way turned out for the South. Do you think my way (Lincoln's prescription as he outlined in the address) could have possibly turned out any worse?