Thank you, because the Confederates had made it quite clear before the ships were even sent, that if they attempted to resupply the fort, they would have been blown out of the water. Anderson knew this, and sent maps and drawings of the Confederate gun emplacements to Washington.
The mission would most assuredly go to plan B, which was to use their entire force to land men and supplies into the fort.
The did not have orders to attack the Confederate facilities in Charleston unless they met resistance to the resupply effort.
The "if" was already preordained, and everyone knew it. Lincoln's cabinet knew it because they explicitly told him those ships would trigger a war.
Lincoln willfully sent those ships anyway.
The peculiar thing here is that he sent them on a suicide mission. Anyone could have told him those ships would have been wiped out, but he didn't seem to care.
Lucky for him he accidentally sent the command ship to Florida under secret orders and disguised as a British ship. Had he not accidentally detached that ship, it would have arrived at Charleston, taken charge of the fleet, and then proceeded to get everyone killed.
Boy, that Lincoln sure was "lucky."
... because the Confederates had made it quite clear before the ships were even sent, that if they attempted to resupply the fort, they would have been blown out of the water...
Can you suggest a couple of books to better understand this specific issue about the war?