Not exactly the way a statesman is supposed to behave. And Lincoln was getting advice from Seward not to force a showdown. Advice that he rejected.
Why not? Because you don't like the outcome?
President Lincoln wasn't afraid to say he made a mistake.
Walt
Seward was very influential player. Before 1860, he had a lot more national noteriety than Lincoln did. As Secretary of State, early on, he tried to "play" Lincoln.
Seward's big foreign policy idea was to force a war with Great Britain and thereby unite the American people. I don't know if history records what Lincoln thought of this idea specifically. Surely he thought it was totally cracked.
Walt
"Firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen...At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend in the North...You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong; it is fatal." - Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis, April 1861
It looks like Lincoln wasn't the only one to go against the advice of their Secretary of State. Presidents are in office to make decisions, and not do exactly what their cabinet wants them to do. Lincoln listened to his cabinet, let them debate the issue, but in the end he did what he thought was the right thing to do.