I think you would be hard pressed to find another leader of any era that didn't completely dehumanize the enemy they were fighting. This is something that he was able to do better than any other in my opinion. With the difference in resources, manufacturing, and manpower the North was certainly poised to quell the rebellion, but it didn't happen that way. Lincoln always had an eye on reconciling and not on destroying.
What makes a person great? To me it is the way he or she acts in the face of adversity. Lincoln was elected and tasked with the stewardship of the United States, and he passed on the country as a whole to his successor. It's not the victory over the South that was his greatest accomplishment, but that he did it without creating a guerrilla war after it was over. I think it was his focus on healing the rift that gave the South hope for the future.
I don't know, there was plenty of reasons for the South to feel destroyed and/or not being open to reconciliation. The North wasn't so kind. Just the fact that a large segment of an 80 year old nation that was very different than the North (not just because of slavery) wasn't allowed to become it's own nation is enough to be very resentful over.
Lincoln did a good job of reuniting the U.S., but the South didn't have much of a choice at that point but to surrender and go along with the conditions.
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