A House-Divided

[Eva Elisabeth]

Your point was apparently well taken by both the South and by Lincoln's friends???

Abraham Lincoln AFAIK never considered himself an Abolitionist nor a Radical.
He even bowed to the southern interests inasfar that all he proposed was to not allow slavery to extend to the new territories. However, he was a genius politician IMO, also in handling different interests and groups, and I think succeeding without applying these skills would not have been possible.

IMO the Drett Scott decision was (however legal) evil (as Tany seemed to me). Sometimes a mistake or constitutional shortcomings aren't perceived (or not perceived strongly enough) to take action to correct these unless three-score and ten years or more have passed.
Such happened then as it does now as it did and does in other countries - I don't think there's any constitution/basic law in the world without ammendments.

As Gene said, a great wrong needed to be righted. (Maharba, I wonder why you don't look critically at the Constitution or the DOI instead that hadn't explicitly endowed all humans with the same rights. Making an evil legal simply doesn't make it righteous. I know, it was not yet in the spirit of those days, that's just the way it was.)