And the feral government grows ever larger and more hostile to its people.
Unfortunately the Dims already made the federal government overreach before the Republicans won the argument on abolition. The Republicans seemed content with keeping abolition at the state level until the Dims passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and sent federal marshals into free states punishing regular citizens for not turning over runaway slaves. Then the Dim majority SCOTUS in 1857 wrote their judicial activism in the Dredd Scott, declaring blacks were non-citizens all across the land. In other words, it's the Dims not the Republicans who were at fault for making slavery a federal issue instead of letting it stay a state issue.
Only after that did the Republicans organize a federal abolitionist message (in the election of 1860, though that was mainly Congress, since Lincoln usually said he was willing to let the states decide to keep from tearing the country apart).