Well he was against harsh punishment for the south or for it?
against, right?
I just dislike him because i think he forced an unnecessary war on the country.
i would be wrong
His main goal was to hold the Union together. Slavery wasn't any part of it. Lincoln didn't believe that any State had the right to secede. Different times in those days. The country wasn't yet 100 years old at the time.
He was against harsh punishment, while the dominant mood in Congress was to ‘wave the bloody shirt’. Lincoln could and did claim Commander-in-Chief powers to conduct the war as he choose, but once the war was over, Congress felt that it had the power to administer the aftermath. That’s why, had he lived, there would have been a huge contest of wills between the executive and legislative branches.
Lincoln believed, rightly or wrongly, that secession was an illegal non-event. Even though they claimed to have left the Union, the southern states had not. Therefore the southern states regained (under his plan) their representation in Congress when 10% of voters signed a loyalty oath. Congress didn’t like this at all. Lincoln’s death elevated him to secular sainthood, but VP Johnson didn’t benefit from this because he was a southerner and not even a Republican and Congress rolled over him.
All of this is why I think the ‘what if Lincoln had lived’ is such an interesting scenario.