It certainly seem that no one was fooled by any of the smoke screens that we all read about and take for the Gospel truth in our revisionist history books today. In all of this we must remember that very little of the contents of these document where unknown or secreted, from the southern authority. There were still in March of 1861 a lot of people in Washington D.C. who would later join with the Southerners.
This whole thing of whether there was going to be a war or not in March of 1861 rested in only one place, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington D.C. and the resident thereof. The Southerners were simply planning for their own independence and reacting to the information that was coming out of Washington.