And your clinging to the "It was all Lincoln's fault" defense is to be expected. You didn't really start it. You didn't really lose. Denial is the southron defense.
If Booth hadn't shot him, it would be even money whether Congress ever got its power back. Lincoln might today be remembered as the American Caesar, who pretended to fight for freedom but extinguished the Republic instead.
Lord, it is getting deep in here.
Read a book, denial is a river in Egypt. Lincoln and the whole grisly industrialist crew -- Seward, Cameron, Stanton, Chase, all of them -- were to blame. But don't go by me.
Jefferson Davis, who, like [Alexander] Stephens, wrote his account after the Civil War, took a similar position. Fort Sumter was rightfully South Carolina's property after secession, and the Confederate government had shown great "forbearance" in trying to reach an equitable settlement with the federal government. But the Lincoln administration destroyed these efforts by sending "a hostile fleet" to Sumter. "The attempt to represent us as the aggressors," Davis argued, "is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf against the lamb in the familiar fable. He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that strikes the first blow or fires the first gun."From Davis's point of view, to permit the strengthening of Sumter, even if done in a peaceable manner, was unacceptable. It meant the continued presence of a hostile threat to Charleston. Further, although the ostensible purpose of the expedition was to resupply, not reinforce the fort, the Confederacy had no guarantee that Lincoln would abide by his word. And even if he restricted his actions to resupply in this case, what was to prevent him from attempting to reinforce the fort in the future? Thus, the attack on Sumter was a measure of "defense." To have acquiesced in the fort's relief, even at the risk of firing the first shot, "would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one's breast, until he has actually fired."
In the twentieth century, this critical view of Lincoln's actions gained a wide audience through the writings of Charles W. Ramsdell and others. According to Ramsdell, the situation at Sumter presented Lincoln with a series of dilemmas. If he took action to maintain the fort, he would lose the border South and a large segment of northern opinion which wanted to conciliate the South. If he abandoned the fort, he jeopardized the Union by legitimizing the Confederacy. Lincoln also hazarded losing the support of a substantial portion of his own Republican Party, and risked appearing a weak and ineffective leader.
Lincoln could escape these predicaments, however, if he could induce southerners to attack Sumter, "to assume the aggressive and thus put themselves in the wrong in the eyes of the North and of the world." By sending a relief expedition, ostensibly to provide bread to a hungry garrison, Lincoln turned the tables on the Confederates, forcing them to choose whether to permit the fort to be strengthened, or to act as the aggressor. By this "astute strategy," Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot.
Jefferson Davis was correct to esteem Lincoln a liar: the ships that appeared off the Charleston bar carried hundreds of troops with supplies sufficient to sustain them for a year.
Lincoln's personal secretary agreed with Ramsdell, writing in The Outbreak of Rebellion (there was no rebellion):
As a matter of fact, President Lincoln had not at that date decided the Sumter question; he was following his own sagacious logic in arriving at a conclusion, which was at least partially reached on the 29th of March, when, as we have seen, he made the order to prepare the relief expedition. By this time [Associate Supreme Court Justice] Campbell [of South Carolina], in extreme impatience to further rebellion, was importuning Seward for explanation; and Seward, finding his former prediction at fault, thought it best not to venture a new one. Upon consultation, therefore, the President authorized him to carry to Campbell the first and only assurance the Administration ever made with regard to Sumter -- namely -- that he would not change the military status at Charleston without giving notice. [This was palpably untrue, as reinforcements were embarked with the "relief" expedition, and no notice of their presence was given to the Carolinians. --LG]This, be it observed, occurred on the 1st of April, about which time the policy of Seward favoring delay and conciliation finally and formally [as soon as Congress left town! -- LG] gave way before the President's stronger self-assertion and his carefully matured purpose to force rebellion to put itself flagrantly and fatally in the wrong by attacking Fort Sumter.
[Emphasis added.]
Lincoln started the war. The crime of assault does not involve the striking of a blow; that's battery. Lincoln assaulted the South by advancing a (foreign, hostile) fleet under color of deceitful assurances, in order to induce the South to attempt to remove Sumter from the board in self-defense.
[You, feigning exasperation] Lord, it is getting deep in here.
Why, don't you think Lincoln had piled up as many unreviewed executive powers as Julius Caesar had? He was making new law the way the Mint made new coin.