For much of my life we and the Soviets (and now Putin's Russia)have been provoking each other. Didn't go to war. And the Union managed to not start this,
It's amazing how effective nuclear deterrence is. Nuclear weapons are possibly one of the most effective defensive weapons ever created.
The Confeds had options get a Constitutonal Convention tie it up in courts have their Reps foot drag on legislation the way today's GOP is doing this to Obama. Instead they fired on Federal Troops because they split the Democratic ticket between two candidates and the then obscure Republican party won.
The GOP was not obscure party by 1860. They had effectively replaced the Whigs as the second party in the United States. While they were boosted by the Democrats being split, Lincoln would have still won even if the Democrats were united. The Republicans were very smart in nominating a moderate who had appeal in moderate states like Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (which Lincoln won handedly).
I wouldn't say the South was provoked.
The South was totally provoked. Many Northern states refused to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act. Northern politicians did everything they could to mitigate the political power of the South. Abolitionists characterized Southerners as a bunch of Calvin Candys. The North was essentially the equivalent of that kid who kept going "Not touching you, not touching you!"
The election of Abraham Lincoln was the last straw for the South. Even though Lincoln was a moderate, to the South, the GOP was nothing but a party of radical abolitionists thanks to the previous Presidential election where the GOP nominee was John C. Fremont and the party was characterized by other radical abolitionists like New York governor William Seward. Lincoln was seen as one of them just by association.
It also didn't help that the South clearly saw that slavery's days were numbered. It did not have a future in the United States and they were stubborn to keep hold of their archaic institution.
The South refused to let go of slavery, the way many other countries did. They also refused any compromise.
This is actually where I will criticize the American Abolition Movement tremendously. They hurt their own cause far more than any pro-slavery faction could.
The reason why slavery was done away in many other countries (primarily the British Empire), was because slave owners were compensated for the emancipation of their slaves. While they were compelled to free their slaves, slave owners were given restitution. In areas that emancipated their slaves without compensation, like in Continental Europe, it was done away with because slavery really had no impact on their economies the way it did in the New World. Slaves were few and far between, there were few slave owners to be an integral part of the political/economic elite, and the Abolition Movement was deeply allied with Christian principles in a deeply Christian continent.
The American Abolition Movement, as opposed to the rest of British-led global Abolition Movement, rejected compensation. They refused to allow slave owners to have any compensation at all because they refused to recognize its legitimacy. They were so far radical in their beliefs that many Abolitionists even refused to recognize the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution because it legitimized slavery. And then they took it even further by characterizing slave owners as nothing but purely evil cartoon characters. Some went beyond even that like John Brown, by inciting slave rebellions or took part in the Underground Railroad to help their slaves escape.
But it's very hard to criticize the slave owners for being uncompromising when the American Abolition Movement was just as uncompromising, if not more. And they are pretty much the reason why the slave owners hardened their pro-slavery position. If the American Abolition Movement embraced restitution and didn't actively antagonize the South, the Southern slave owners probably would have been more willing to compromise and slavery would have probably ended much sooner and without violence.
And even so, some slave states didn't secede.
For various reasons beyond slavery. States like Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia had strong economic ties to the North thanks to the Ohio River or mercantile interests (Baltimore). States like Maryland were also very pragmatic in recognizing that there was just no way that they could effectively defend themselves from a Union invasion. The overwhelming majority of blacks were free in Delaware despite not abolishing slavery.
But at the same time, there were also strong Confederate sympathies in Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky. And they had their own Confederate governments to go along with them. In the cases of Missouri and Maryland, the Union was not very trusting of their loyalty to the Union and used their military to ensure that they would not secede. With Kentucky, they ultimately sided with the Union because the Confederacy violated Kentucky's neutrality.
