And where is that a big surprise? Short of surrendering entirely and unconditionally to Southern demands there is nothing Lincoln could have done or said that would have gotten approval from the Southern and Northern Democrat papers. Their approval wasn't worth the cost. IMHO, of course.
Well, those papers were right that Lincoln's speech and his demand to collect revenue from their imports meant war was coming weren't they?
I found the following additional editorial about Lincoln's inaugural after I posted my 2004 thread above:
In other words, though you do not recognize me as President, I shall not molest you if you will pay taxes for the support of my government. We must have your money, that we cannot bring ourselves to decline, and if you do not let us have it peacefully, why, we shall be compelled to take it from you by force; in which case you, not we, will be the aggressors. This means coercion and civil war and nothing else. [Source: The New York Day Book]
As I've said to you before, Lincoln's speech sounds like a demand that he wants to sleep with your wife, and if you acquiesce to this, there won't be any trouble. Why should the South have not thought he meant war? He did. Peace would have not given him the revenue to run his government.