You need to read some history, my friend.
Lincoln considered the Southern states to be still part of the Union, but wayward misfits. As such, the Constitution still applied to them, and a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery would still be required.
Not necessarily. The Confiscation Acts passed in 1861 and 1862 gave the government to authority to seize without compensation any private property used to support the rebellion. There is no doubt that slaves fell under that category, and that is why the Emancipation Proclamation applied to those areas still under confederate control. And not to put too fine a legal point on the matter, the Emancipation Proclamation did not rule slavery illegal. Had the 13th Amendment not been raftified then once the Southern states had surrendered they could have, in theory, bought slaves from the two states where slavery was still legal and nothing could have prevented that.
If, on the other hand, with secession the Southern states became an independent nation...
The only people who believed the confederacy to be an independent nation were the confederates themselves.
Lincoln had no intention whatsoever of freeing anyone...
Complete nonsense.
...except, as someone had previosuly stated, in the District of Columbia, which was done in 1862 NOT by any benevolence of Ol’ Abe, but because he was presented pretty much with a fait accompli.
And you base this on what? Control over the District was in the hands of Congress and not Lincoln. Had Lincoln opposoed the ending of slavery in D.C. he could have vetoed it. But he did not, just the opposite. He supported it.
Can we call it the War of Southern Democrat Insurrection?
You have to wonder why if Ike Pringle was held in such high regard as a confederate soldier that no one could find the time to even put a headstone on his grave.
They put an headstone on The grave of Robert E. Lee’s horse Traveler.