No, the Civil War started because secessionists started shooting.
Lincoln on many occasions said that he was fighting the war to preserve the Union. I’ll take his word for it. You’re welcome to your own version of history.
“No, the Civil War started because secessionists started shooting.”
This is Lincoln’s Proclamation of April 15, 1861 where he calls for 75,000 militia to ‘suppress the combinations’ in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. It’s as close as he came to a declaration of war and he gives his reason for doing so.
Oddly enough he never mentions Fort Sumter, secessionists, nor shooting.
He does call on “all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our national Union, and the perpetuity of popular government”, the theme of restoring the Union that ran through his Presidency and the war.
http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/35998