I certainly agree that a Lincoln should be viewed as a man, a lawyer & a politician & not as an American demigod. Problem is he spoke against slavery, unequivocally & often. E.g. Chicago, 1858:

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of ultimate extinction.

There are many other examples, but of late anti-racist writers seem blind to them. Lincoln was no revolutionary. He entered office knowing neither the President nor Congress had any authority to legislate slavery. But why do you think his election sparked southern secession?

He hoped slavery would gradually die out. That's not inspiring, but it is realistic. To court war means you might lose. Suppose the European powers had recognized & aided the Confederacy? That means a renewal of the trans-Atlantic slave trade & perhaps even its spread south.

There were lots mistakes & missteps in his administration: he tolerated, for a time, an unbelievably corrupt Secretary of War; his call for volunteers to meet the secession crisis was premature, prompting Virginia to vote secession when it might have remained neutral; his bureau of Indian Affairs was so corrupt it forced Little Crow to lead the Dakota to war in 1862.

But I think wrt slavery his record is strong. He did beg, bribe & cajole the House to pass the 13th amendment, which guaranteed its adoption into the Constitution (another act contemporary anti-racism writers seem to miss); he favored suffrage for freemen, & his Freedman's Bureau might have done a lot for free blacks had Johnson not come along & sabotaged it by lacking of funding.