Greg, not all the slave states seceded

No shit??? Really??? Boy, I do SO appreciate being patronized.
But, as you've noted, they were Southern slave states(or if you prefer, "Border States"). Your point being????

Next Greg will be telling us that there was no defacto, economic segregation in the North but if there had been it wasn't so bad...

Now you really are acting the asshole, Strick. Putting words in my mouth is an old, tired, underhand, childish ploy.

-Were Blacks treated like shit in the North in the middle of the 19th century? Of course they were- the whole country was a racist society.

-Was this treatment anything remotely comparable to the treatment of Blacks under chattel slavery? Of course not.

-Does the lousy treatment of Blacks in the North somehow mitigate or excuse slavery? Infantile suggestion.

Lincoln's speeches denying the war was about slavery

Lincoln was a politician, not a saint, and one of the more skillful politicians the U. S. has ever seen. His speeches need to be read with this in mind: remember the "House Divided" speech?. Try reading his letters (several published collections) of the time, which give an entirely different impression, as they weren't for public consumption. Of COURSE the war was "about slavery". The states that seceded did so over the issue of slavery.The Southern economy was BASED on slavery.The "Bleeding Kansas" atrocity was over the extension of slavery. The idea that the war had nothing to do with the issue of slavery is nonsensical on its face.

Recent Northern versions of Reconstruction are consistent with the view you've stated: those bad things didn't really happen...

Bogus. Absolutely and categorically wrong. One example of many? The work by Foner I mentioned. Suggestion: try reading at least one of these books before you tell us what they say.

At the end of the war, the South was promised a conciliatory Lincoln and it got a vindictive Congress.

The "Saintly Old Abe willing to forgive and forget and the Evil Old Radical Republican Congress oppressing the poor South" fairy tale- aside from being an overly simplistic 'explanation' of a vastly more complex issue & which completely ignores the major role Johnson played in the controversy- was and is a fabrication written into those late 19th /early 20th century Jim Crow/White Supremacist "histories" as a sop to "reconciliation" and to Southern "redemption". The fact that it IS a fabrication is amply documented in some of the works you denegrate unread.