Yours is a very interesting thought, i'peter.

Lincoln viewed himself, at least rhetorically, as preserving what had been created "for score and seven years ago", not founding something new. ("Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.")

But one could reasonably take your view that Lincoln, notwithstanding his own characterization, was in fact a "founder" in that the fundamental issue of states' rights had remained unresolved until the Civil War. Indeed, even many Northerners had felt that the southern states were within their rights (though misguided) to secede; the expression of that view was "wayward sisters, go in peace".