The economic argument explains Lincoln's motives in instigating a war.
He sent an armed expedition down to Fort Sumter that his cabinet had warned would cause a shooting war.
He started the official planning for the Fort Sumter expedition immediately after the Senate adjourned its special session on March 28. At that point in time, it was widely circulated that Fort Sumter was to be evacuated. That's what the Confederate Commissioners had been told by Seward. That's what Lincoln's personal messenger Ward Lamon had intimated to South Carolina's Governor Pickens.
The special session's very last act on March 28 was to check with the President to see whether he had anything to tell them. From the Congressional Globe:
Mr. Powell, from the committee appointed to wait on the President of the United States and notify him that unless he has some further communication to make, the Senate is ready to adjourn, reported that the committee had waited on the President, and been informed by him that he had no further communication to make to the Senate.
On March 29, Lincoln officially ordered Welles and Cameron to prepare the secret relief expedition to Sumter. Actually however, if I remember correctly, a draft plan document was started on the 28th. Wasn't an expedition that would likely or possibly result in a shooting war important enough to inform the Senate?
Lincoln did not call for Congress to reconvene until July 4. In contrast, Jefferson Davis reconvened his Congress in a little more than two weeks. Shouldn't Lincoln's Congress have been involved in questions of war and peace? By keeping his Congress out of session, Lincoln was able to do various things without checks and balances (redirecting authorized budget money to things which had not been approved by Congress, changing the enrollment period for troops from what Congress had authorized, assuming legislative and judicial powers that were not his under the Constitution, starting a blockade of Southern ports).
A blockade was a recognized act of war. Open hostilities between sides may or may not be. The US Supreme Court later ruled that the war started on April 19th when Lincoln issued his proclamation of the blockade. [Link].
Lincoln succeeded in manipulating the country into war. However, that was not what I was taught in high school American history class.
Me either. I was taught that he was a Hero and he fought the Civil War to free the slaves.
I have come to regard this as an ex post facto justification for the horrors that were unleashed upon the nation.