I will agree this far, that they should not have opened fire on Fort Sumter -- that was extremely stupid and short-sighted. The South wasn't ready for a war; it was barely on its feet.
That said, there is a difference between starting the shooting and starting the war. Lincoln served notice that it would be war, in his First Inaugural (read it sometime). Press reception of that speech, north and south, was unequivocally united on one point: it meant war. "It was on."
Those deaths are at their feet, my chip-shouldered southern FRiend. Also the assassination of our great president.
No, they aren't. They're at Lincoln's feet, I think because Lincoln planned and intended to start a civil war as a way around the Constitution. He needed secession to get the South out of the way, and he needed the war and bloodshed to drag the Southern States back into the Union at gunpoint, and reorganize their governments at his pleasure, and according to his will.
You've blown any bit of credibility you might have still retained.