The correct answer to this open question is the following.
Although there are no options attached, we can say the following.
Indeed, President Lincoln decided that he could not allow the country to break apart and that only military force could save the Union. Under those conditions, President Lincoln did not have many options to choose from in his quest to save the nation.
With the victory of Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election, the leaders of the southern states knew that things were not going to favor them. Northern abolitionists continued to demand the end of slavery in the southern states. However, slavery was on the basis of the southern economy. Landlords needed slaves to work for long hours in the farm fields to produce the cash crops needed for trade and to export to Europe.
Some southern states ended up making the decision to secede from the Union and these states were Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
That is why, when the war ended, President Lincoln supported the Ten Percent Plan to readmit former Confederate states to the Union. Lincoln wanted to heal the wounds of the Civil War as quickly as possible.
After the victory of the Union Army over the Confederated States that ended the Civil War, President Lincoln wanted a quick union of the country. He created the Ten Percent Plan where only 10% of the people of each Souther State had to make a swore of allegiance to the Union for the Souther state to be readmitted. Lincoln really wanted a quick Reconstruction process.