I understand your comments and know Lincoln’s position on slavery.
As Lincoln took office, he no longer had a slave problem. The states with the highest populations of slaves had seceded. This no longer affected his Presidency, either culturally or morally. The problem was gone.
With the morality argument being moot, and what was to happen in the territories being in the hands of a unified US Congress, Lincoln had a clean slate for governance.
Secession solved the problem.
Secession solved nothing and made a precarious situation even more so.
Secession had no legal standing. It was merely a mask for insurrection in support of slavery. Further, the southern call for 100,000 men was in part to seize territories and border states which had not pretended to secession.
Secession was a lie. Insurrection was a continuing problem. Slavery was the goal, and the 100,000 soldiers called for the the leaders of the insurrection were enslaved as surely as any negro.
"Let those who are interested remember that labor is the only source of wealth, and how small a portion of it, in all old and civilized countries, even the best governed, is left to those by whose labor wealth is created" (Feb. 6, 1837). Marx himself didn't say it any better.
More? January 10, 1838, Calhoun repeated his defense of slavery as a "positive good": "Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." Odd, given that almost all other "free institutions in the world" had already abolished slavery or were in the process of doing so.
Oh, and not to leave out the good old class struggle elements of Marx, Calhoun again: “It is useless to disguise the fact that there is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization a conflict between labor and capital."
In fact, Calhoun completely agreed with the Virginian George Fitzhugh who called slavery the perfect example of communism because it "cared" for the "needs" of the enslaved.
Oh, gee, and how about this little Calhounian tidbit: He WROTE the "Tariff of Abominations." That's right, like Kerry, he voted for it before he voted against it.