The South certainly could have won the war, and you point to one of the ways it could have happened. Winning a war is more often than not a political distinction, not a military one.
There were three ways the CSA could have won the war (Won being defined as obtaining their primary war goal: Independence).
1) Outright Military Victory. I'll agree, the simple numbers game makes this option almost impossible. The South could not do enough to fundamentally destroy the North's Warmaking ability.
2) Foreign Intervention: The great Chimera of the war. Because of the nature of European politics, highly unlikely, but still concievable. If France and England do take a hand, the South wins.
3) Breaking the Will of the North. Notice, this is not the same as breaking their ability to fight. A nation can still have lots of men, lots of guns and the ability to fight, but if the national support for the war goes away, the other side can still win. Look at Vietnam. This is by far the most realistic of the three "ways" for the CSA to win, and one that arguably, they came quite close to. If Bragg had been better in his pursuit after Chickamauga and broken up the Army of the Cumberland... The morale effects in the Union would have been pretty severe. The East was the same old stalemate, the west was the only region of progress, and having such an extreme setback in TN? Likewise (and less likely), if one of Johnston's proposed counterattacks in the Atlanta Campaign had worked as planned, even if only to knock Sherman back to the TN border. The groundswell for McClellan and the Copperheads was strong enough in early 64 as it was... We may well have seen the chaos which ensued when a War Democrat was elected by Copperheads...
As to the original question, I'm not entirely sure how to answer it. Lincoln's nature is such, I find it impossible to imagine him in that situation, so I'm getting a mind cramp.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by WillieD13</i>
<br />I don't think it would have made any difference in the outcome. The war hinged on logistics, not leadership. No matter how well led, the south could not compete with the Northern industrial base, not to mention the greater population, so aside from absolute incompetance the North was bound to win. The only real hope the South ever had, was that the people of the North would cave in and not accept the casualties. That didn't happen, so logistics came into play, and that made it clearly inevitable.
Willie Davis
1st LT
3rd Bde, 1st Div
XIX Corps, AoS
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Major General Gary McClellan
1st Division, XXIII Corps
AoO,USA