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Try this out. It is a very good summary of the scenario that you have been struggling to turn into a conspiracy theory. It is short and sweet and guess where I found it:

“The seceded states laid claim to the national forts within their boundaries, but they did not make good their claim to Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Forts Pickens, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson in Florida. They soon made it clear that they would use force if necessary to gain possession of Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens. President Abraham Lincoln resolved not to cede them without a fight. Secretary of State William H. Seward, Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the US Army, and Porter devised a plan for the relief of Fort Pickens. The principal element of their plan required use of the steam frigate USS Powhatan, which would be commanded by Porter and would carry reinforcements to the fort from New York. Because no one was above suspicion in those days, the plan had to be implemented in complete secrecy; not even Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was to be advised.

Welles was in the meantime preparing an expedition for the relief of the garrison at Fort Sumter. As he was unaware that Powhatan would not be available, he included it in his plans. When the other vessels assigned to the effort showed up, the South Carolina troops at Charleston began to bombard Fort Sumter, and the Civil War was on. The relief expedition could only wait outside the harbor. The expedition had little chance to be successful in any case; without the support of the guns on Powhatan, it was completely impotent. The only contribution made by the expedition was to carry the soldiers who had defended Fort Sumter back to the North following their surrender and parole.

Lincoln did not punish Seward for his part in the incident, so Welles felt that he had no choice but to forgive Porter, whose culpability was less. Later, he reasoned that it had at least a redeeming feature in that Porter, whose loyalty had been suspect, was henceforth firmly attached to the Union. As he wrote,

“In detaching the Powhatan from the Sumter expedition and giving the command to Porter, Mr. Seward extricated that officer from Secession influences, and committed him at once, and decisively, to the Union cause."

Wikipedia

Because no one was above suspicion in those days, the plan had to be implemented in complete secrecy; not even Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was to be advised.

And yet the orders for all other ships were quite public. Why secrecy for just one ship? How does that even slightly make sense?

The relief expedition could only wait outside the harbor. The expedition had little chance to be successful in any case; without the support of the guns on Powhatan, it was completely impotent.

Some time earlier in one of these discussion threads I posted a quote from Captain Abner Doubleday of the US Army, and he said that it would have been pointless for the Navy to engage and that if they had done so, all the ships would have been sunk. That is one expert Military opinion on the topic. Yesterday I posted commentary from David Dixon Porter that said the same thing. (another military expert.) Here it is again.

So we have two military experts with knowledge of the situation saying this mission was literally impossible and would have resulted in the loss of many men and all the ships who engaged.

So was President Lincoln some sort of blithering idiot? Had the mission went as the men aboard those ships (and the Southerners) had been led to believe, it would have been an utter and humiliating disaster.

But look! For some amazing reason, the command ship, (the only one given secret orders) didn't show up, the ships didn't engage as everyone believed they would, and the "blithering idiot" disaster was miraculously avoided!

Wow! That Lincoln is just D@mn lucky that the orders all somehow managed to get jumbled up! He must be Irish and sh*ts horseshoes! He was saved by his own blundering incompetence by an astonishing twist of fate!

To quote David Dixon Porter above, "a more foolish expedition was never dispatched."

Yeah, it was very foolish, but it somehow managed to achieve everything Lincoln wanted in giving him power to stop the Confederates from becoming independent of the Washington DC/New York "establishment."

That Lincoln was just D@mn lucky, wasn't he?