“What was President Lincoln’s policy in March of 1861 regarding war with the Confederacy?
(Answer: no war unless Confederates started it.)”
Lincoln started it by not getting his Federal troops the hell out Charleston Harbor. SC was a free and independent state. Lincoln knew exactly what would happen by not leaving Charleston Harbor. He orchestrated the entire thing.
“Before his inauguration, Lincoln sent a secret message to Gen Winfield Scott, the U.S. general-in-chief, asking him to make preparations to relieve the Union forts in the South soon after Lincoln took office. Lincoln knew all along what he was going to do. President Jefferson Davis sent peace commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty with the Lincoln administration. Lincoln refused to meet with them; and he refused to permit Secretary of State Seward to meet with them. After Lincoln assumed the presidency, his principal generals recommended the immediate evacuation of Maj Anderson’s men from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—which was now located on foreign soil. To resupply it by force at this point would be a deliberate act-of-war against the C.S.A.”
http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=130
Sorry, FRiend, but facts are facts and as John Adams, Ronald Reagan and others have noted: "facts are stubborn things."
The fact is that Fort Sumter was only one of dozens of Federally owned facilities unlawfully seized by secessionists in January through April, 1861.
Some were seized even before a state formally declared secession, and so are obvious cases of rebellion and insurrection.
Regardless, there's no law anywhere which says that US government property suddenly, magically, becomes not US property just because somebody declares it so.
In fact, when some self-proclaimed "government" begins seizing US property, threatening and attacking US officials, those are each acts of rebellion, insurrection and/or war.
Both Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln attempted to peacefully resupply US troops in Fort Sumter and both were defeated by secessionist gun-fire -- acts of war on the United States.
Lincoln's attempt further resulted in a Confederate military assault on Sumter, causing its surrender.
So blaming Lincoln for Confederates' assault on Fort Sumter is like blaming President Franklin Roosevelt for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- certainly there were things each might have done differently.
But the bottom line is: both attacks started wars which resulted in the Unconditional Surrender of the military force which assaulted the United States.