This is how one Southerner felt about the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
“The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. ... Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”
Robert Toombs, April 11, 1861
The South should never have fired on Fort Sumter, and it indeed guaranteed that Lincoln would unleash hell on earth.