If Abe Lincoln was half the man and statesman he gets credit for, there wouldn’t have been a war, (The War of Northern Aggression) and 625,000 men would not have lost their lives destroying one another and half of America.
I've come to the conclusion, personally, that Lincoln had a secret war platform, and that he and the leading Republicans acted in full knowledge and pursuit of that platform. That the exposition of that platform was the substance of Lincoln's "unrecorded speech" to the 1856 Republican convention, and that those who heard it kept its key points, of coercively reorganizing the South and abolishing slavery everywhere, in confidence.
More recently, I've been half-persuaded that young Mr. Lincoln, as a member of the House of Representatives, was exposed to the thinking of former President John Quincy Adams, a fellow anti-Southern representative, about the opportunity a civil war might present, for the Northern States to seize and coerce the Southern States and "reorganize" their governments, i.e. drive the Southern politicians out of public life and install quislings in their stead who would do the bidding of the Interests.
I based my conclusion about a "secret platform" on reading about various bold, organized, obviously well-thought-out and yet secret steps Lincoln took before he entered office, as opposed to the steps he would have taken, had he been a conciliator instead, like President Buchanan.