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.
Davis dicated the timing. Since the insurgents had already called for an army of 100,000 men, it was just a matter of time before war between the two sections ensued.
The neo-rebs throw up their hands in mock disbelief because the government took measures that were completely reasonable, irregardless of what Abraham Lincoln stood for.
The neo-rebs profess to be upset because we are not European enough. We're not Balkanized enough to suit them.
Walt
He actually had to. Without the financial and resource support of the Upper South states which rejected secession to that point, his little cabal of Deep South slaveocrats would have collapsed under its own corruption and ineptitude. Those lazy slave drivers could even figure out how to deliver the mail let along run a nation. Davis had to start a shooting war to get Virginia, North Carolina and he hoped Kentucky on his side by appealing to regional solidarity. He took a crapshoot that ended up costing 600,000 lives. Toombs warned him not to do it but Davis was desperate.
Except that the states had seceded and wanted the Feds out. If I recall, President Davis was not a fire-eater and preferred other means of handling the situation. Remember it was Davis who said:
"A question solved by violence must remain unsolved forever."
It's very clear from Lincoln's orders to Gen. Scott and Anderson that a means of force was necessary. Included in those orders were naval signal books for Gen Anderson to communicate with the Union fleet.