Can you provide any evidence at all that any of the southern leadership held positions more open towards blacks than did Abraham Lincoln? Just curious.
It is also clear that Lincoln and most of his supporters did not believe in racial equality and that his preferred solution to the racial problem was to ship the African-Americans away, and short of that to leave them to "root hog or die."
From "Statement of College and University Professors in Support of the Confederate Battle Flag Atop the South Carolina Statehouse"
"It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit...Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the last years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people, to promote the welfare of the white people of his country."
Frederick Douglass, noted African-American leader.
"Although the South would have preferred any honourable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and receives without reserve the amendment which has already been made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. This is an event that has long been sought, though in a different way, and by none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia."
Gen. R.E. Lee, 1866.