Lincoln embraced violent overthrow of a violent system: slavery

From here:    

At his Second Inaugural, in March 1865, Lincoln embraced [John] Brown’s penetrating insight that slavery was already a system of violence and so could not be eradicated peacefully. Echoing Brown, Lincoln explained the Civil War’s staggering death toll as divine retribution for two and a half centuries of ‘blood drawn by the lash’. He was reminding his listeners that violence in America did not begin when John Brown unsheathed his sword; it was embedded in slave society from the outset. And in the end, as Brands concludes, ‘Union arms, not Union arguments, overthrew slavery.’

...a bit of a contrast to the plea for reconciliation from Lincoln's First Inaugural when he pleaded for our "better angels" to be reconciled, and certainly a contrast to modern attempts at political reconciliation.