To be fair, not all criticism of Lincoln is southern.
Look north to Wisconsin editor, Marcus M. Pomeroy who during the war wrote that Lincoln was “but the fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism”— a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.”
In 1864, Amos Kendall published a series of letters denouncing Lincoln. “Our federal Union,” he declared, “is in more danger this day from Abraham Lincoln and the unprincipled and fanatical faction to whom he has surrendered himself, soul and body, than from all other causes combined.”
The condemnation of Lincoln was not just in the South or North, but international.
The London Times said the United States, under Lincoln's control, had “entered on that transition stage, so well known to the students of history, through which Republics pass on their way from democracy to tyranny.”
Nor is the frank assessment of Lincoln just historical. In the 1980s, author Dwight G. Anderson in his book wrote that Lincoln became the “very tyrant against whom Washington had warned in his Farewell Address, a tyrant who would preside over the destruction of the Constitution in order to gratify his own ambition.”
So, no, criticism of Lincoln is not just southern.
Of course all leaders have critics. The point I was trying to make is that he had the full support of the republicans, and many democrats, in Congress. If he had done what many of you lost causers suggest he should and just let the rebelling states go, he would have been impeached, removed from office, and the rebellion would have been crushed by the newly elevated Vice President. The republicans believed that the south was in rebellion and it was the duty of the president to crush it.