Lincoln believed that his ends justified his means. He used war to destroy the U.S. Constitution in order to establish a powerful central government.
Lincoln assumed dictatorial military powers. He used them to suppress all Northern opposition to his illegal and unconstitutional acts.
Lincoln violated every constitutionally guaranteed civil right. He ignored rulings hand-delivered to him by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney ordering Lincoln to respect and faithfully execute the laws of the United States and to protect civil rights.
Lincoln replied by suspending habeas corpus, by instituting a secret police, and by arbitrarily arresting without warrants or due process thousands of leading citizens of Northern cities, state legislators, U.S. Congressmen, newspaper owners and editors, ministers, bankers, policemen--literally everyone who expressed the slightest reservation about Lincolns aims and means or who was anonymously denounced by a rival or envious neighbor.
In the thoroughness with which Lincoln suppressed dissent, he prefigured 20th century totalitarians.
Lincolns train of abuses far exceeded those that provoked our Founding Fathers to declare independence from Britain.
In conducting the war, Lincoln encouraged his generals to violate international law, the U.S. Military Code, and the moral prohibition against waging war on civilians. Lincoln urged his generals to conduct total war against the Southern civilian population, to slaughter them with bombardments, to burn their homes, barns and towns, to use rape as a weapon of war, to destroy foodstuffs, and to leave women, children and the elderly in the cold of winter without shelter or a scrap of food.
In order to carry out Lincolns wishes, a new kind of soldier was needed. General Sherman filled his regiments with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of Europe. The war against the Southern civilian population was fought with the immigrant soldier.
Professor DiLorenzo writes that had the South won the war, there is no doubt that Lincoln and his generals, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, would have been hung as war criminals under the Geneva Convention of 1863.
I hope I'm not being too confusing, I just woke up. 
Happy Darwin day everyone! Get out there and use those opposable thumbs!
