[lentulusgracchus]

Lincoln was merely trying to retain what belonged to the Federals.

If so, he had a funny way of showing it, stripping garrisons and abandoning forts all over the West.

If he were acting in accord with your attribution of motive, he'd have ordered federal garrisons everywhere to stand fast, not burn the place and bug out as they did at Harper's Ferry and the Norfolk Naval Yard, or evacuate to other facilities as they did at Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney.

No, that isn't what Lincoln was doing. What Lincoln was doing, was preparing to levy civil war. The facilities he retained in the East, all had value if one were waging war -- or provoking one. The facilities that had no value in waging a war in the East, were stripped.

[Non-Sequitur]

Most of the abandonment you speak of took place before Lincoln was inaugurated, so the question should be asked why did Buchanan give them up? Lincoln did not abandon or destroy a single federal facility from the time he was inaugurated until the south started hostilities at Charleston. After that, it became a military question. The Navy abandoned and burned Norfolk on April 20 in order to keep the facilities out of the hands of the confederate forces, and at Harper's Ferry the Virginia militia were on their way to seize the facilities so they were destroyed.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

No, that isn't what Lincoln was doing. What Lincoln was doing, was preparing to levy civil war. The facilities he retained in the East, all had value if one were waging war -- or provoking one. The facilities that had no value in waging a war in the East, were stripped.

Ah now your are comparing apples and oranges.  His trying to maintain Ft. Sumter was from before the Civil War.  After the war started, he gathered all the troops he could to put down the rebellion.