If Lincoln considered the 11 states of the Confederacy to be part of the United States, as he (and posters in this thread) claimed, and he was defending that United States, then that means he was (or should have been) defending those 11 states just as much as any other states.
He did. As the duly-elected President of all the states, he defended all loyal Americans from the regional faction that rejected the United States Constitution and attempted to divide them from the United States.
What was he defending them from? The South didn't invade any union states, dumbass.
Americans who were loyal to the United States deserved to be defended by the United States no matter where in the United States they lived.
"The Southern ideals of honor, family, and duty were as important to Unionists as to their pro-secession neighbors. They believed, however, that rebelling against the United States, which many of their ancestors had fought for in 1776 and 1812, was the unmanly and dishonorable act".\
Horseshit:
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Daily Tribune, was the embodiment of the North. In an editorial for the paper on December 17, 1860 (three days before South Carolina voted in Convention to secede, and amidst rumors that the state would likely secede), Greeley articulated the view of secession that most in government and in the North held. In that brilliant editorial, entitled “The Right of Secession,” he wrote:
We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or do not assent to Mr. Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration of Independence that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government,” etc. etc. We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And, if it justified the secession from the British Empire of three million colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the federal union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not someone attempt to show wherein and why we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation. We do not think such would be just. We hold the right of self-government to be sacred, even when invoked on behalf of those who deny it to others. If ever ‘seven or eight States’ send agents to Washington to say “We want to get out of the Union,” we shall feel constrained by our devotion to Human Liberty to say: ‘Let Them Go!” We do not see how we could take the other side without coming in direct conflict with those Rights of Man which we hold paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and advantageous.
To summarize what we have learned,
1) Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, the nation then comprised of all the states identified below:
2) President Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States the United States on March 4, 1861, when he took the following oath:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
3) Throughout his tenure as President of the United States, he followed his oath when a regional faction that had rejected the Constitution of the United States attempting to deprive loyal Americans of their citizenship.
4) In his capacity as President of the United States - of
all the United States - he deployed United States troops
within the United States
to preserve United States territory and safeguard the citizenship of Americans in those states where it was threatened.