Exactly. He also neglected his lone opportunity to work for real compromise in the winter session of congress by instead taking the political route. Lincoln knew and Henry Adams admitted that the incoming president had sought to intentionally lead the debate on the compromises toward slavery and away from the tariff and other disputes. To that end, Lincoln personally guided his other 13th amendment - the pro-slavery one - through congress and then, to escape responsibility of it all, he claimed to have not even seen the thing when he endorsed it in his inaugural.
When inauguration day came he gave a speech indicating his goals were clear - he would use force to collect his taxes. It was a direct message to those southern members of congress who were still in Washington that war was coming. Those who remained wrote this. A group of them telegraphed the confederate government moments after the speech to convey what The Lincoln had said - "inaugural means war."
And then at first opportunity with Fort Sumter, Lincoln launched a fleet of warships for no other purpose than to provoke a war there. This is evidenced by the fact that the first action by the first ship of the fleet to arrive there, the Harriet Lane - firing on a civilian confederate vessle that was trying to enter the harbor. Lincoln immediately expanded that war with his blockade of the south, including states that had not yet seceded. Within a few months he had an army of invasion ready and he began his march toward Richmond. There is no doubt as to the facts of the situation - Abe Lincoln chose war and in choosing that war he consented to it in its bloodiest and most brutal form.
Contrary to his speech, Abe Lincoln did not seek to avoid war. He brought it on himself. He tried to blame it on everybody but himself, including God, but he was ultimately responsible and, like a lying coward, he shunned that responsibility for his sins.
Perhaps Lincoln said it best, when he pointed out that one party "would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish."
Had the secessionists accepted the result of the election, including the pledge of the victorious party to work for the repeal of Dred Scot and to restore the old policy of banning slavery in at least some of the Federal Territories, the war could have been avoided. But this, precisely, was never on the table. The Government, under Lincoln's stewardship, would not yield on these points, nor would it accept the legality of secession.
Lincoln was willing to go to war to overturn what he held to be, in my view rightly, an illegal secession, or, in plain terms, a rebellion.
Davis and his associates, insisted on the wrongness of the Republican Platform, and on the legal right to secession as a proper response to the Republican victory at the polls. They were willing to let their cause be vindicated, if God so willed, by arms.
Both sides hoped to triumph without a recourse to arms.
Since neither party would yield, and since, in Lincoln's view, the acts of the secessionists were rebellion, while in their own view, the secessionist slave states were not rebels but sovereign entities, "the war came."
Doubtless this won't convince you, but I state it to clarify what I, in agreement with Lincoln, hold.
Regards,
Richard F.