No of that changes the contradiction between your tagline and Lincoln’s statement. He was willing to allow slavery. Period.
As far as “Lincoln refused to recognize that a regional minority had the right to destroy the Union established by the “people of the United States,”...that’s stupid on its face. The “Union” could not be established by the “people of the United States” because they did not belong to the “United States” when it was the people of the INDEPENDENT STATES established the Union. Your statement makes absolutely no sense.
Ahh, I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying the Lincoln was denying freedom to southerners who wished to secede.
Instead, you are claiming that his recognition of the constitutional right of slavery to exist where it was established constituted him “denying freedom to others.”
I would disagree. Lincoln created no new slaves, he merely adopted the position of most of the Founders that slavery should not be permitted to spread farther so that in the long run it would stew in its own juices and eventually fall apart. He allowed others their legal right to deny freedom, he did not practice the denial himself.
Ronald Reagan recognized that the people of eastern Europe and USSR were enslaved. He called publicly for their freeing and worked towards that eventual happy day. He did not, however, invade those countries to free the people.
Did his recognition that he had not legal or practical way to free those slaves mean that he was personally denying them their freedom?
The states were not Independent States when the Constitution and its Union was established. They were part of a previous Union, which was closed down in order to “establish a more perfect Union.”