What Lincoln did, didn’t do, the legality or illegality of any of it is, to me, in 2018, not very relevant. With a nation half in insurrection and at civil war, both Lincoln and Davis did what had to be done from their own perspectives. It’s easy to armchair General or armchair President what went down in 1861-1865.
Much more so than you realize. I constantly point out how the 14th amendment gave us abortion, homosexual marriage, anchor babies, banned prayer in public schools, and a whole host of other disasters.
Lincoln also boosted the size and scope of government power far beyond what the founders intended. He literally birthed the leviathan that is eating us alive now.
People don't see how modern problems are very much a consequence of Lincoln's actions, because they never bother to look at the whole sweep of history between now and then, and they don't realize how much of our current troubles were the consequence of those decisions he made about the civil war.