OIFVeteran: ** “if one of the other Republican candidates had won the nomination, and the election, the response from the south would have been to same. “ **
The most likely alternative, iirc, was Senator & former NY Governor William Seward, who Lincoln made Secretary of State.
Seward was a different kind of man from Lincoln and doubtless would have played events differently.
Probably would have sought & compromised for peace, not to the degree of, say, a Democrat like 1864 candidate McClellan, but more than Lincoln.
But Seward was also more radical in abolitionism than Lincoln, so no telling...
In 1861 Seward called Lincoln, “the best among us” and there’s no suggestion he ever wavered in that view.
In 1860 Deep South Fire Eaters announced that if Lincoln won they would secede.
I think they expected the election would get thrown into the House of Representatives where deals could be cut to protect slavery.
What they may not have expected was how strongly 1860 Northern voters rejected Democrat-Compromise-Unity politics.
The silent majority of Northerners in 1860 wanted to drain the swamp in Washington and make America great again.
But Democrats then as now just can’t accept elections that go against them.
I would agree with your assessment that Seward would have done things somewhat differently. However, the south had already stated in the 1856 election that they would secede if the Republican, Fremont, was elected. I really don’t think it would have mattered who was the candidate for the republicans, the south would have still seceded, forcing Seward (or Chase, etc) to respond with force. It was the election, even the very existence, of a mildly abolitionist party that was intolerable to the south.