The Sunken Fact: Lincoln Instigated the War

So by "provable fact" in this case you mean reading both Lincoln's and Beauregard's minds and thus knowing their intentions. Once again, believing something does not make it so. Calling what you do not agree with myths, is, in my experience rarely persuasive. There was no "foreign power" although the Confederates might have thought there was and, not knowing what the ship held, the Confederates opened fire.
This is a bit scary: The "provable fact" is based on what the objective record establishes Lincoln wrote at the time; i.e., "I order you not to 'take that ship' to Charleston Harbor, but instead I order you to take that ship to Pensacola." Given the indisputable fact that this is what Lincoln ordered, and what the captain of "that ship" did, one has to be living in an alternative universe, not to recognize it is a myth to state "that ship was bringing food to American soldiers" at Fort Sumter.
 
Winfield Scott, US War Department-

HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., April 4, 1861.
Lieutenant Colonel HENRY L. SCOTT, A. D. C., New York:

SIR: This letter will be handed to you by Captain G. V. Fox, ex-officer of the Navy, and a gentleman of high standing, as well as possessed of extraordinary nautical ability. He is charged by high authority here with the command of an expedition, under cover of certain ships of war, whose object is to re-enforce Fort Sumter.

To embark with Captain Fox you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about two hundred, to be immediately organized at Fort Columbus, with a competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence. A large surplus of the latter-indeed, as great as the vessels of the expedition can take-with other necessaries, will be needed for the augmented garrison of Fort Sumter.

The subsistence and other supplies should be assorted like those which were provided by you and Captain Ward of the Navy for a former expedition. Consult Captain Fox and Major Eaton on the subject, and give all necessary orders in my name to fit out the expedition, except that the hiring of vessels will be left to others.

Some fuel must be shipped. Oil, artillery implements, fuses, cordage, slow-matches, mechanical levers, and gins, &c., should also be put on board.

Consult, also, if necessary, confidentially, Colonel Tompkins and Major Thornton.
Respectfully, yours,
WINFIELD SCOTT.
 
This is a bit scary: The "provable fact" is based on what the objective record establishes Lincoln wrote at the time; i.e., "I order you not to 'take that ship' to Charleston Harbor, but instead I order you to take that ship to Pensacola." Given the indisputable fact that this is what Lincoln ordered, and what the captain of "that ship" did, one has to be living in an alternative universe, not to recognize it is a myth to state "that ship was bringing food to American soldiers" at Fort Sumter.

Please cite the source
 
You might start with The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln and work your way from there. In Vol. IV, pps. 313-324, you have reproductions of the several messages between Lincoln and Welles on the one hand, and between Lincoln (using Seward as go-between) and the naval officers. The Editors point out in footnote that they are not reprinting the actual originals of the messages as these cannot be found, Lincoln no doubt having made them disappear. From there you go to the Naval Records of the Rebellion, Series I, IV p 109 et seq, to get the full picture: Lincoln using Welles to say one thing publicly while he says sometime different privately. It is a fact of American history that, in its reality, it is so much more exciting than in the romance. Fox told the essential story to The New York Times as soon as the war was ended, and Porter told it in his tome, Naval History of the Civil War (New York, 1886), and in his book published in 1885. Our kids are taught romance, who knows why: maybe something about a failure of the whole white people of the Union to accept responsibility for failing to solve the problem freedom for the Africans entailed.
 
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