The war only happened because Jefferson Davis wanted it to happen. Sumter and Pickens were not the property of South Carolina or Florida. The fact that there were troops in both those places posed no danger to Charleston or Pensacola in particular and the confederacy in general. No hostile action had been taken by either fort towards shipping. There was no reason to bombard them other than Jeff Davis wanted to. And he knew the results of his actions, his own secretary of state had warned him. But he went ahead anyway and the war that followed was his responsibility.
Lincoln made his policies very plain in his first inaugural address and elsewhere. The "government will constitutionally maintain itself", Lincoln said, and so it did.
The north "crucified their feelings", to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the laws. The slave power dumped both in the toilet.
Lincoln could not act alone and did not act alone in all this. It was suggested that he be impeached if he DIDN'T react strongly to the secession crisis. When he called for volunteers on April 15, that call was answered to overflowing. --Many-- northerners said it was time to give the rebels some of their own medicine. Beat a U.S. senator at his desk? Impose gag rules on the Congress? Rifle the mails? Demand a slave state for every free state? Dictate the tariff rates?
The north had bent over backwards to placate the south.
Firing on Old Glory was the last straw.
It's not clear to me to what degree Lincoln thought that forcing the issue at Sumter would galvanize the north. Bruce Catton said it had the exact effect he intended.
The neo-rebs detest Lincoln because he was --so- effective in the face of the well matured conspiracy of the slave power.
They would brand as execessive the most reasonable measures for a government threatened with a giant nest of traitors.
It's time to call them on this.
Walt