Lincoln's theory was to "let them down easy"; i.e. the South and I personally think that reconstruction would have been a lot less stressful and probably easier for the South. There would not have been so much of a revengeful mode for reconstruction towards Southerners to my mind of thinking....
Wild Bill probably has some super ideas on this!
"The Past is a foreign country...they do things differently there" - L. P. Hartley