[Non-Sequitur]

Your premise seems to be that Lincoln set the trap and the poor dumb confederates fell into it. That doesn't say much about the southern leadership, does it? At least one member of the government, Robert Toombs, apparently knew better and tried to warn Davis but was ignored. Davis needed a war to fill out his confederacy. He knew it couldn't survive otherwise.

[Aurelius]

"Your premise seems to be that Lincoln set the trap and the poor dumb confederates fell into it."

Are you working from notes from the last time we were through this? It would appear so. Yes, some hot-head Confederates were provoked into firing. Of course, it is widely conjectured that there may have been some aggressive actions by the "resupply" ship that history has not recorded. In any case, I think it would be possible to document that Jefferson Davis was elsewhere that day.