I do know that the Civil War was one fucked up deal... Any arguments there???

None. And I will gladly check out that book if you can remember tha author.

I'm not saying that Lincoln was a saint or a demigod- just that we need to stick with the facts. He wasn't some evil south-hating dictator, either. He was a man placed in a VERY difficult situation and, overall, he made more than a good job out of it.

Sorry, Kent, but you argument doesn't hold water.It didn't take a war to end slavery in New York because its economy & society wasn't based on chattel slavery, and Blacks were only a tiny percentage of the population. There's nothing to indicate the South would have "eventually" - whatever that means- voluntarily given up slavery at home or their demands that it be extended country-wide.

the Emancipation Proclamation involved the freeing of slaves in confederate states... Go figure???

Easy. Once word got out, the many thousands of "Contrabands" that flocked into Union Lines deprived the Confederacy of that much labor. Plus, a good number of 'em ended up carrying muskets in the Union Army. Pretty clever dude, Old Abe.

...resentment that is still very part of the mindset of a lot of Southerners even today.... It is hatred...

Southerners might want to direct some - if not all?- of that resentment and hatred at the Southern politicians & plantation aristocracy that together dragged them, over a 40 year ramp-up, into an idiotic war. Its instructive to read the speeches of John C. Calhoun & his ilk in Congress- the man comes off like Glenn Beck. And the Southern Newspapers of the time- the Richmond Examiner, perhaps, or the Charleston Mercury, etc.- make Fox News look like Ed Murrow.