Hello, x. I see nobody has replied to you on this point, which they ought to have done.
Much of the argument about the American Civil War revolves around a key point made by the Southern apologists, that even the Northern Peoples never approved in convention assembled the changes Lincoln sought to impose on the Constitution and on the relationship between the central administration and the States. Lincoln sought to eclipse their authority as much as that of the Peoples of the South. Hence my argument elsewhere and earlier, that Iowa farm boys lost as much as Alabamians, by fighting for Mr. Lincoln -- they became their own worst enemies, and fought on the wrong side of the war. Failing all else, and granting you that Easterners by then were sufficiently deracinated in their understanding of individual responsibility and freedom to have lost the idea of America, having already compromised themselves, in vast droves, in millions of dirty little compromises with employers and ward heelers; Midwesterners nevertheless should have had more sense than to ratify anything like the Fourteenth Amendment.
If Lincoln had simply done nothing and let the rebels have their own way on all matters, he'd likewise be reviled by people today and blamed for what happened.
Not necessarily. He certainly would stand better with Southerners, 140 years of relentless schoolhouse propaganda notwithstanding. You must equate "people today" with the business interests of the East Coast, and what Ivy Leaguers think.