Lincoln, in order to invade eleven Confederate states that had quite legally seceded from the Union, also violated the Fifth Amendment by depriving slaveholders of property without due process of law via the Emancipation Proclamation (I don't favor slavery but Lincoln had no constitutional justification), initiated the bloodiest war in American history for ilegal purposes, sent Sherman to lay waste to persons and property throughout much of the South, initiated an utterly unconstitutional military draft, and an utterly unconstitutional (as SCOTUS later found) personal income tax, subjected NYC to naval bombardment during the draft riots, and smashed the presses and jailed the editors of newspapers in the North opposed to his war.
As Dr. Walter E. Williams has pointed out, secession is the ultimate mechanism for enforcing the Constitution's limittations on Federal power. If you take away teh right to secede, then the states have lost their ultimate weapon and the Federal government can de facto do anything it wants with NO limits.
There is nothing conservative, constitutionalist, or pro-freedom about that.
Suspended habeas corpus, arrested and deported a member of the U.S. Congress form Ohio for criticizing his war policy (President Davis sent him back), and undertook other actions that trampled all over the Constitutional limitations on government. Lincoln was the first Big Government President. He paved the way for Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Klintoon, etc.
The 10th Amendment does not give any right for States to secede.
Even Madison knew that and called such a view nonsense.
Lincoln, in order to invade eleven Confederate states that had quite legally seceded from the Union, also violated the Fifth Amendment by depriving slaveholders of property without due process of law via the Emancipation Proclamation (I don't favor slavery but Lincoln had no constitutional justification), initiated the bloodiest war in American history for ilegal purposes, sent Sherman to lay waste to persons and property throughout much of the South, initiated an utterly unconstitutional military draft, and an utterly unconstitutional (as SCOTUS later found) personal income tax, subjected NYC to naval bombardment during the draft riots, and smashed the presses and jailed the editors of newspapers in the North opposed to his war.
This is not the thread to debate the Civil War and Lincoln's actions in it.
I will just say that Lincoln had every right to raise an army to put down a revolt (as Washington did), that much of the actions he took as President were due to the temporaly conditions of the war, no different then Jeff Davis did in his role as the Confederate President.
The South had no constitutional right to leave the Union since none of their constitutional rights were threatened by Lincoln's election.
They only attempted to leave because they felt that in the long run slavery was going to be ended by restricting its growth and spread.
The myth that the South was fighting for its 'constitutional liberty' was started after the war to put the South in a better historical light.
My personal least-favorite President is FDR.
The particular complaints you have about Lincoln were decisively settled in April, 1865. I think well of Lincoln because, although he did not start the war (it was started by the rebels who fired on Fort Sumter), he didn’t let the Union get destroyed. He saved the American Union. The consequences for the history of the American people would have been quite different and quite dire had that not been so.