The actual "start" of hostilities was when John Brown (a Union man) took the supply depot at Harper's Ferry.
It was the Union that started the conflicts by raising armed conflict to the Southern state's rights.
It was the Union that refused to release Fort Sumter and reinforced it rather than surrender it to the sovereign and separated government of South Carolina. The Confederate South Carolina had legal right to the fort, and the Union folks were typical stupid Yankee belligerent and defiant.
It was the Union that attacked the South and spent the vast majority fighting in the South.
It was the Union who started the war. All claims to the contrary are merely stupid Yankee belligerence and modification of the true history by liberal Yankee sympathizers.
The Union could easily have allowed the South to secede, withdraw their troops, and leave the South alone.
But no, they had to invade the sovereign confederate state of Virginia, over and over. They had to run up Look out Mountain, and scurry down the Mississippi to Vicksburg.
Who in Chattanooga hurt the Union first.
What Southern gentleman in Vicksburg would rather not have had the Union show up.
The North was ALWAYS the aggressors until Lee took the battle to the Yankee fields of Pennsylvania. Even then He had enough Southern Hospitality to keep the battle in the fields and hills.
He had enough character to realize he should have stayed home.
But not the Yankee's.
Sherman - That ugly Yankee took the battle to defenseless Godly women and children of the South for the sole purpose to demoralize them. But, all he did was light the fire of bitterness that the carpetbagging Yankee feed the flames with the support and approval of Yankee heathens that still are trying to this day to push wrong down the throats of tender Southern lasses.
The South was defending itself from the aggression by the blue bellied Yankee, and had the South been forward looking, it would never have joined the union in the first place.
Bunch of hot headed Yankees started the Revolutionary war, and the 1812 war, and the Southern gentlemen had to rescue them both times.
But leave it up to the sorry Yankee to demand the Southerners conform to their thinking.
Of course, the Yankee has such a long history of doing right, and holding the Yankee presidents accountable. NOT!
Look at the history of the US.
From the beginning, nearly every time the US has thrived it has been under the leadership of good Godly Southern gentlemen. The most corrupt leadership of the US has always been and includes to this day the Yankees.
From the beginning, nearly every major evil has fomented with the Yankee. The most viscous, ungodly, perverted have been Yankees.
Why if it weren't for the quality and high principled Southerner, God would have allowed the Yankees to be speaking French.