Yes, so true, and this quote shows how Lincoln phrased his rejection of the Crittenden Compromise offered to stop the ongoing war. It was made to stop the cession crisis by embed slavery in Constitution so the South could have it permanently protected as their way of life. Lincoln eloquently rejected that compromise, thus choosing war, because he rightly felt you had to see the Constitution through the Declaration’s claims of liberty, quality and justice for all, the basic inalienable rights of each individual. That insight is correct, I believe, as it is the core of democracy, and if that is compromised, there is no democracy, but a reversion to autocracy. Lincoln himself as a figure has been whitewashed though. The Republicans back then, and until 1964, were the party of civil rights, not the party of Republicans today. The supremacist party was the Democrats.

All white Southern Confederates espousing the principles of supremacy were Democrats, and their party gained completed control of the South, turning it into a one party run country by by 1900. After those white supremacists revolted against the Civil Rights Act being signed in 1964 and 65 (again because of their core inability to tolerate black suffrage like John WIlkes Booth, a Democrat) they fled the Democratic Party and moved en masse to the Republican Party, which by then in the south had become a near powerless shell. They took over that Party by their usual effective brutal tactics and began whitewashing the image of Lincoln, moving his image a radical leftist abolitionist type to moderate Republican who meekly ended slavery to minimize the fact that he would hated this Southern group of Democrats being in his party. That’s another whitewashing reason people have mixed views on Lincoln, because he’s been whitewashed and co-opted from radical left wing to moderate right wing. Yet another victory for the supremacists who want to confuse your beliefs and paint all facts contrary to their beliefs white.