Yeah, I've been following it for the most part. To me, at the end of the day, it was Lincoln calling the south's hand. If they meant to have a war, they'd have it. But they'd be the ones to start the shooting. Your position essentially leaves the south with no will of their own, puppets dancing on Lincoln's string, unable to stop their hands from lighting the fuses on their guns.
A case could just as easily be made that the south NEEDED to start a shooting war in order to swing the upper south states into their camp and to stiffen the spines of their people, who had started to think that maybe this whole secession thing might not have been such a good idea after all.
In Virginia they all say, if reduced to the dread dilemma of this memorable alternative, they will espouse the cause of the South as against the interest of the Northern Confederacy. But they whisper of reconstruction, and they say Virginia must abide in the Union with the idea of reconstructing the Union which you have annihilated. I pray you, gentlemen, to rob them of that idea. Proclaim to the world that upon no condition, and under no circumstances, will South Carolina ever again enter into political association with the Abolitionists of New England. Do not distrust Virginia. As sure as to-morrow's sun will rise upon us, just as sure will Virginia be a member of the Southern Confederacy. And I will tell you, gentlemen, what will put her in the Southern Confederation in less than an hour by the Shrewsbury clock,--Strike a blow! The very moment that blood is shed, old Virginia will make common cause with her sisters of the South. It is impossible that she should do otherwise." --Edmund Ruffin, 1861'In 1861, shortly after the Confederate Government was put in operation, I was in the city of Montgomery. One day (April 11, 1861) I stepped into the office of the Secretary of War, General Walker, and found there, engaged in a very excited discussion, Mr. Jefferson Davis (the President), Mr. Memminger (Secretary of the Treasury), Mr. Benjamin (Attorney-General), Mr. Gilchrist, a member of our Legislature from Loundes county, and a number of other prominent gentlemen. They were discussing the propriety of immediately opening fire on Fort Sumter, to which General Walker, the Secretary of War, appeared to be opposed. Mr. Gilchrist said to him, "Sir, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days!" The next day General Beauregard opened his batteris on Sumter, and Alabama was saved to the Confederacy.'"--Jeremiah Clemens, 1864
Then can you point out the instant where I changed from saying Lincoln didn't want war to where I suddenly began saying Lincoln did want it? That where I said he knew without a doubt that resupplying Sumter would cause it? I'm confused on that part.
In fact, my main complaint with Non-Sequitur's argument was that he making Lincoln the sole actor in the affair, and that distorts the picture of what happened at Sumter. To say Lincoln did not know how the South would respond is a distortion of Lincoln's great political savvy.