No, of course not. My point is that the South started a war because they believed they were so right that the only recourse was political violence. Their reward for it was to lose everything they feared they were going to lose... And more.

Americans have this unfortunate tendency towards exceptionalist self-image. They remember the Revolutionary War and forget the Civil War. They remember World War 2 and forget Vietnam. They believe when they wield violence it is because they are right and the cause is just, when history shows that, even for them, the victor in such conflicts tends to have very little to do with just cause and a lot more to do with dumb luck (or, if I'm being a bit more generous, "material and strategic reality divorced from the justness of the casus belli").

Ah I see, you're saying it was a bad decision for the South to start the war.

I agree history records fort sumter as the official start of the war, but I guess I was looking at it big picture that "a war was on it's way" regardless of the singular event that sparked full war.

My perspective on the civil war is "good thing it happened and the Union won, otherwise who knows how long black people would have been enslaved". It would have been nice to end slavery without the war, but Lincoln tried to negotiate to this end extensively and couldn't secure it.

Also, yes I agree the vietnam war is severely undertaught. And in the modern era, Afghanistan.

Depends on how you feel about a foreign occupied military outpost in your state/country that you've broken ties with.

This isn't in support of the reasons the ties were broken, but I can absolutely see if say Germany leaves the EU, then they'd probably want an EU military occupied base in Germany to leave said base.