Are you suggesting that The Republicans of Lincoln's day were some how evil, and the Confederate democrats were good?
Well, let's rehash political history from Reconstruction shall we. During Reconstruction, those were of the liberal perspective gravitated to the Republican Party, which is why there was such a Republican presence in North Alabama in the post-Reconstruction period. The Republicans in Reconstruction Alabama held their power due to a combination of old Jacksonians and well, carpetbaggers and blacks. The Democratic Party of today relies roughly on that same coalition. On the other hand, the Reconstruction Democrats, later Redeemers, though I'll use the term Bourbon, they consisted of former Whigs, the planters, industrialists, and they represented the Conservative wing of Alabama politics. Once again, you can take where the Republicans are strongest today, and superimpose that over where the Democrats were strongest in the 1870's
During Reconstruction, Republicans in Alabama championed land redistribution, the disenfranchisement of anyone who had been a member of the pre-war aristocracy, wealth redistribution, and the destruction of traditional Southern culture in favor of some idealized model based on what was being done up north. Now is it just me, or does that sound like the Democrats of today. Not to mention the fact that these Reconstruction morons bankrupted what was at the time Alabama's largest city, and they also did a good job bankrupting most of the South's other major cities. They also had a habit of using blacks for their votes, but then not doing anything for them, much like today's Democrats.
Abraham Lincoln upheld a liberal tradition first espoused by men such as Andrew Jackson, and so it should be no surprise that the one Republican who all liberals admire is Lincoln. He increased the authority of the central government at the expense of the states, and men such as Thaddeus Stevens engaged in expansive government escapades to try and remake a region of the country in the image he thought proper.