“The Deep South provoked...”
You mean like John Brown murdering and terrorizing non-slaveholders in Kansas and the “Secret Six” financing the Brown’s Slave “UPRISING” at Harper’s Ferry, (READ: kill all Whites in the South)..... same as financing the ISIS today? Or invading Virginia like Hitler did Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia to consolidate Greater Germany?
Secession was an open question till Lincoln settled it by force just like Cromwell settled it by trying to destroy the Irish .... it is just the way it was, and is, till things change again..
But John Brown was captured (by Col. Lee), tried and lawfully hanged for his crimes, on December 2, 1859, well more than a year before Lincoln took office.
So that issue was long settled.
But unlike John Brown, no Confederate was ever punished for provoking war against the United States in the months from December 1860 to April 1861.
During that period Confederates forcefully seized dozens of major Federal properties, including forts, ships, arsenals and mints, Confederates threatened Union officials and fired on Union ships -- all this before the Confederacy's military assault on Fort Sumter.
The Confederacy started war by its military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1861.
Then on May 6, 1861 the Confederate Congress formally declared war on the United States.
At the same time, the Confederacy sent military aid to Confederate forces fighting in Union states such as Missouri.
That's what I meant.