“According the the FR Lincoln Coven the south never left the union. It was never recognized as a nation.”
Well they are accurate in reflecting Lincoln’s position.
Lincoln chose not to recognize the independence of the southern states in the same way that the Crown refused to acknowledge the colonials declaring their independence 90 years earlier.
So the war he was waging was against people that he considered his fellow American citizens, no matter what they thought about being a new nation. He probably holds the record for death and destruction of Americans since he argued that the Confederacy never existed.
That record stands with jeff davis who instigated and waged war against his fellow Americans.