DisHonest Abe was spoiling for a fight, also. Otherwise, he would have removed the foreign troops from Southern soil and used verbal diplomacy. Only one outcome could result from leaving Union troops in Sumter, and that is exactly what Lincoln was counting on.
Sherman in charge of fighting terrorism? Now that would be a short war!
That may be true; hell, it takes a terrorist to know one.
But actually, I kinda doubt it. After all, he would still be subject to the whims of politics and public opinion.
Furthermore, just because Sherman didn't hesitate to make war on noncombatants during his March to the Sea (women, children and the elderly), doesn't mean that he would have been effective against one of his own kind.
As much as I love my Southern heritage I damn sure would have rather had Sherman as my general than Hood or Johnston.
"Sherman, in his march across Georgia and up through Carolina, had sixty thousand men with him. I don't know what percentage of them were illiterate. I know there were very few men in there with a delicacy of manners that you'd expect nowadays. And the whole time he made that march, those sixty thousand men, I had not heard of one case of rape. And that is one of the finest compliments I know you can pay this country and the soldiers it produced that we did not engage in these usual horrendous things that are common in civil war. The fact that we spoke the same language is not what made us close together. In fact, in most civil wars they speak the same language, and they're very savage with each other. But somehow we didn't do that."
--- Shelby Foote