Excellent post, OP. It's disheartening when you learn that Lincoln, who we were taught as kids growing up in the U.S. was a brilliant leader and a hero, was actually a traitor and a horrifically destructive force in American history.
Few people know that he didn't give a shit about the slaves, and used the Emancipation Proclamation solely as a war measure, to screw the South to the maximum. He actually never even remotely considered making blacks equal to whites in any way, be it socially or politically, and said he'd like to send all blacks to "some fertile country like Liberia, which they could have to themselves".
He had those who disagreed with his policies thrown in prison, without so much as a trial (it's well known he suspended Habeas corpus, in direct contravention to the Constitution). He bought newspapers and forced them to publish propaganda in support of his policies. He stumped for, and successfully ensured the passing of, the Morrill Tariff, which financially crippled the South. The Morrill Tariff was merely the final straw; there had been a series of very draconian tariffs for decades, imposed by the North on the South, and none of them had ANYTHING to do with slavery. The incredibly unjust tariffs were the main reason the South decided to secede from the Union.
But that wasn't acceptable, as far as Lincoln was concerned. In his inauguration speech, he basically threatened to attack the South if they refused to pay the tariff, though he was careful not to use those exact words. But the South had already decided, since the series of tariffs that had been imposed were unconstitutional, that the only option was secession.
A group of Southern states seceded, as was their right under the Constitution, but Lincoln decided that was unacceptable, AND ATTACKED THEM, starting what could only be called, "The War Against Southern Independence". In so doing, he gave a big, fat middle finger to the Constitution, slaughtered untold numbers of his countrymen, and ensured that, absolutely contrary to his most famous quote, that government of the people, by the people, and for the people absolutely DID perish from the Earth.
After Lincoln's horrific actions, the term "These United States" became "The United States". Instead of a group of States with like-minded goals and a shared ideology, who came together and agreed to peacefully coexist for the greater good, after the "Civil War" (a terrible misnomer of a name, by the way) what you had was a far more powerful and more centralized Federal government, which demonstrated that it no longer GAVE A SHIT what the individual states wanted. The states were no longer able to govern their affairs as they saw fit, with only minimal intrusion from the Federal government. Now you had a situation where, if any particular state or group of states decided that the Federal government no longer represented its interests and it decided to secede, the Federal government wouldn't hesitate to use its position of power and influence to ensure that THIS WAS NOT ALLOWED. Even if it had to start a war to enforce that power, it would.
Lincoln set us on the road to perdition we're suffering on today, the one with a tremendously powerful, willfully abusive Federal government that does, basically, whatever the fuck it wants, and states' rights are considered a silly anachronism by the uneducated public, who have been brainwashed by government schooling to believe that Lincoln "saved the Union". What a crock of horseshit!
