More Fort Sumter thread drift. The importance of the border states was that they had most of nonslave population and all of the industrial capacity of the Southern states. Add Tennessee, Maryland, and Missouri to the Confederacy and maybe the war goes on long enough for the Confederates gain the support of England and France.

Remember, the South didn't have to defeat the North to successfully secede – they just had to keep the Union from governing the Southern states. Could they have done that with additional resources from border states and open support from overseas? Personally I doubt it, but, yeah, anything is possible.

Something else to consider is that the North states were enraged by the attack on Sumter. They provided unqualified support and recruited more troops than Lincoln himself had requested. Would he have had that level of support had he been the aggressor and attacked the forces surrounding Fort Sumter? Could Lincoln have successfully reasserted the union control over the South without unqualified support from the Northern states?
- Phil