It wasn't only Southerners who thought the Federal government was overreaching. The Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision are both good examples of how the South used Federal law to their advantage, over the objections of Northen States. The political lines were also less rigidly geographical in the decade leading up to the Civil War, with pro-banking Whigs generally pitted against anti-banking Democrats and various factions filling in the gaps.
The Fugitive Slave Act gave the federal government the power to see that Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution was followed and prior Supreme Court rulings followed that said slaves must be returned immediately to their owners once it was established that they were slaves. As long as they remained in the Union, Northern states had no power to nullify a constitutional law.
The Dred Scott decision held that blacks were not and had never been citizens. Incorrectly, I think, but that was what it held among other things such Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories.
Let's see how Lincoln responded to these two great sources of Northern indignation, the Fugitive Slave Law and Dred Scott.
Lincoln said he would enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. In fact, shortly after he was inaugurated his friend US Commissioner Stephen A. Corneau of Springfield, IL, authorized some escaped slaves in Chicago to be captured and sent them back to Missouri [Link]. Chicago had been a sanctuary city for escaped slaves up to that point in time. Once escaped slaves saw that the Lincoln administration was going to enforce the law, 1,000 fugitive slaves left Chicago for Canada within days [New York Times, April 9, 1861, their bold]:
Departure of Fugitive Slaves for Canada
Chicago, Monday, April 8. One hundred and six fugitive slaves left this city last night for Canada via the Michigan Southern Railroad. It is estimated that over one thousand fugitives have arrived in this city since last Fall, most of whom have left since the recent arrest of five by the United States Marshal.
Detroit, Monday, April 8. About three hundred fugitive slaves, principally from Illinois, have passed into Canada at this point since Saturday, and large numbers more are reportedly on the way. Many are entirely destitute, and much suffering is anticipated, notwithstanding the efforts made for their relief.
In 1857, Lincoln said in a speech about the Dred Scott ruling that, "We desired the court to have held that they were citizens so far at least as to entitle them to a hearing as to whether they were free or not; and then, also, that they were in fact and in law really free."
Here is how Lincoln reacted in 1864 to a delegation of free blacks asking for citizenship and the right to vote more than a year after the Emancipation Proclamation [Source: New York Times, March 5, 1864, paragraph break mine]:
COLORED PETITIONS FROM LOUISIANA
A delegation from New Orleans is here [Washington, DC] representing the free colored people of that city, with a view to securing their rights as citizens and voters at the hands of Congress. Their petition is signed by over a thousand names, all representing both real or personal property. One of the delegates is counted among the rich men of New Orleans. Four of the petitioners were soldiers and one a Lieutenant in the French army when Napoleon was First Consul. They gave as reasons why their prayer should be granted, the services rendered by their fathers to Gen. Jackson during the British attack on New Orleans, and their own alacrity in coming forward to the assistance of Gens. Butler and Banks against the rebels, and the fact that they pay taxes on over fifteen millions of dollars of property, and their unswerving loyalty to the Union.
In their interview with President Lincoln he declined to act on their petition, taking the ground that having the restoration of the Union paramount to all other questions, he would do nothing that would hinder that consummation, or omit anything that would accomplish it. He told them that, therefore, he did nothing in matters of this kind upon moral grounds, but solely on political necessities. Their petition asking to become citizens and voters being placed solely on moral grounds did not furnish him with any inducement to accede to their wishes, but that he would do so whenever they could show that such accession would be necessary to the re-admission of Louisiana as a state in the Union.
So much for taxation without representation. So much for the argument that the Southern states had never left the Union and therefore didn't need to be readmitted. Lincoln was also on record saying the territories should be for free white settlers or words to that effect.
I suspect Lincoln knew that when black suffrage was put before Northern voters back then it failed by massive percentages. If Lincoln gave the vote to these deserving blacks, other blacks would want it too, and Lincoln would likely have not been reelected by the mass of white voters later in 1864. He would have failed in his quest to force the South back into the Union.