I have come around to the position that the refusal to evacuate those forts and the refusal to negotiate for a peaceable withdraw from them represents the start of the war.
Once you accept that someone is going to hang on to something that has no further value to them except as a casus belli, then you realize the intent was to have a war all along.
More rubbish & nonsense.
In fact, neither Democrat President Buchanan nor Republican President Lincoln abandoned any fort which had US troops to defend it and could be resupplied.
Of those, there were three: Pickens, Jefferson and Sumter.
Both presidents attempted to resupply all three forts and were successful in two cases, Pickens & Jefferson.
But at Sumter in January, Buchanan's unarmed resupply ship, Star of the West, met with secessionist cannon fire and withdrew.
Lincoln's resupply ship, SS Baltic escorted by a revenue cutter USS Harriet Lane, met a major military assault on Fort Sumter, resulting in its surrender.
The decision to launch that assault on Fort Sumter, and thus start Civil War, was made by Jefferson Davis, not President Lincoln.
Of course, I "get" that you don't like the truth.
But it remains true nonetheless.