He clamped down the same on dissent in the North. He crushed anti-draft protesters. Without putting too a fine point on things, except for slavery (a huge “except”) the South was right. It’s a terrible tragedy. I was born and bred in Wisconsin of a family of Irish immigrants, that includes a number of men who fought for the North.
"Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?"
That's like saying except for that murder thing Ted Bundy was a real nice guy.
Except that the insurrection in the south created the conditions in which support for the insurrection was treason.
Without the insurrection, Lincoln would not have had cause to quash dissent, and didn’t for quite a while even with the insurrection on. The thing that always astounds me is how long it always was from the time of a treasonous insurrection it was to the time that Lincoln acted to stop the treasonous acts.