If you’re not familiar with me, I have crossed swords many many MANY times with many of the Dopers in this thread on issues of slavery and the Confederacy, so often that it’s a bit weird being on their side now, but you’re simply wrong or are misinterpreting many of the things in your OP and subsequent arguments.
If by provoke you mean that he refused to run from Charleston with his tail between his legs, that’s a possible interpretation. To me, provoking them would have been if he had opened fire on Charleston from one of the Federal forts. Major Anderson evacuated the fort he occupied to cross to the unfinished Fort Sumter not to provoke but for the simple reason his men were starving and out of supplies and Sumter had more provisions and was better set up to withstand a shelling, but he was under the strictest of orders not only not to fire upon Charleston but not to return fire if fired upon.
Anderson had big guns and ammo at his disposal, he could have returned fire. HE WAS AN ARTILLERY INSTRUCTOR AT WEST POINT- HE KNEW HOW TO DO IT. He could have done serious damage to the Confederate batteries- the cannons at Sumter were longer and more powerful than those firing on them- but Lincoln was determined that if any blood were drawn the south was to draw it. To say he provoked it is to say that if you tell me “get out of my way or I’ll knock you down” and I don’t get out of your way that I’ve provoked you into a fight.
Pay it with what exactly? Did they take a printing press and money stock paper with them or a handwritten note that said “IOU-32 million wagon loads of cotton- Love Jeff, Alex, Judah and the Gang”? It wasn’t to pay the debt, it was to determine what portion was fair, and there’s a more than semantic difference, plus they were not fully authorized- “ambassadors without portfolio” if you will. There were more than a few Confederate senators and Congressmen who said essentially “screw the national debt- tabula rasa dude” to the notion.
Napoleon III never sent ambassadors or emissaries to D.C. for the purpose of negotiating a peace. There was nobody for Lincoln to refuse to see. N3 was actually wishy washy on the issue- most of the times he didn’t meet with peace treaty advocates, none- repeat NONE of whom were authorized to negotiate a peace anyway and often as not were men like Slidell or Jewett who took it upon themselves to approach him.
Unless you’re saying Lincoln refused to see the Confederate reps, in which case this is completely understandable. To meet with them would be to acknowledge the legitimacy of a rebel government. While it’s associated with the late 20th century the notion of “We do not negotiate with terrorists” was well in force long before the 1980s or even before Fort Sumter.
Imagine that Cuban activists decided to make Miami an independent city completely out of the jurisdiction of Florida of the USA. They seize its airport and its harbors and take control of all roads in and out of the city, and they do this without bloodshed. They proclaim (whatever is Spanish for) the Free and Independent Municipality of Miami". They are largely funded by drug lords (no more loathsome to the minds of our day than slave masters were to abolitionists and anti-expansionists of the time) who funnel vast amounts of money to them.
Representatives from this Free State of Miami decide to prove that they only want to break away in peace and come to D.C. with letters of credit for $20 billion dollars- totally legit offer. (This is something the South did not have incidentally- the high water mark of their treasury was $15 million borrowed from Alanger- that’s far less than $1 billion today.) They say “We are here to pay for the airport we seized and to make downpayments on the private and corporately owned property we have seized in our independence.”
Keep in mind- nobody has been killed by these people- they only want to peacefully withdraw from the USA and to make Miami a free and independent state.
How likely do you think the Obama White House or the Congress, Democrat or Republican, would be to negotiating with them?
He didn’t. He sent provision ships. If he had sent warships they would have blasted the hell out of Charleston- the Confederacy had no navy to speak of yet and at its height they had fewer ships than Cornelius Vanderbilt alone would later lease to the Union.
More later.