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| The San Jacinto stopping the Trent at sea. John Slidell (right), James Mason (left) |
Early in the war, the Confederate States pinned their
hopes on attracting military and financial assistance from the European powers,
but securing their help was not that easy. Jefferson Davis was one of the
biggest stumbling blocks to recognition. Rather than develop a consistent
foreign policy aligned with the needs of his potential allies, Davis believed
the commissioners should stress the importance of cotton to the prosperity of
the British economy. He also wanted the commissioners to make a play for
sympathy and emphasize the moral issues the South was fighting for (while also
downplaying slavery). Vice President
Alexander Stephens favored exchanging cotton for arms and ammunition.
R. B. Rhett, a
South Carolina politician, suggested a more balanced approach. He wanted to
form a treaty of a commercial alliance with England and France that created
offensive and defensive obligations. He favored
imposing a ten percent tariff on countries that did not accept the treaty, and he
wanted to give the commissioners liberal powers to form alliances.
In the end,
Jefferson Davis won out. He sent a three-person delegation comprising William
Lowndes Yancey, Ambrose Dudley Mann, and Pierre Rost to Europe in February
1861.
In London, the
commissioners had an informal meeting with Lord John Russell, the British
Foreign Secretary, in early May before word of the attack on Fort Sumter
reached England. Not long after that, Mr.
Gregory introduced a motion in the House of Commons to recognize the
Confederate States as an independent nation. The house did not act on
it.
On May 13, Queen Victoria issued a declaration of neutrality that recognized the Confederate States as belligerents. The decision allowed Confederate ships to dock in neutral ports but did not supply them with arms or equipment. The decision disappointed the Confederates. They had hoped to receive official recognition by the European powers along with money and munitions to help carry on the war.
The government of
the United States was just as unhappy with Great Britain’s declaration of
neutrality. They viewed the Confederate States as rebellious subjects with no
international standing. The American minister to England, Charles Francis
Adams, protested the British declaration saying it recognized the Confederate
States as a “maritime power before they had ever exhibited a single privateer
upon the ocean.” He said it was too soon to recognize
them as a power. Later, when he spoke with Lord Palmerston, Adams told him the
life of the rebellion hung on its
recognition by England and France. Without that, the South should “perish in
ninety days.”
John Slidell
In October 1861, Jefferson Davis decided that a single team of commissioners for Europe was not working. So instead, he dispatched separate emissaries to England, France, Spain, and Brussels. For this task, he chose experienced political leaders. James Murray Mason was assigned to London and John Slidell to Paris. In addition, he chose Pierre Rost as an emissary to Spain and Dudley Mann to represent the Confederate States in Brussels.
Rost and Mann were
already in Europe and quickly assumed
their new posts. For Mason and Slidell, the trip was more complicated. They had
to run the Union blockade in Charleston Harbor at the start of their journey.
They sailed out of
Charleston just before midnight on October 11 on the steamer Theodora. “The night was pitch dark, and
about midnight, a light rain began falling, which rendered the chances of being
detected by the blockades extremely slim.” As
the ship passed Fort Sumter, the crew extinguished all the lights on the
Theodora.
The Theodora reached Nassau in the Bahamas on the
night of October 14. The commissioners had initially
planned to book passage on a steamer out of Nassau but decided not to
risk it when they discovered it made a brief stop in New York. So instead, they
made a detour to Cuba. From there, they intended to sail to Saint Thomas and
then to Southampton, England, on the West India Mail Steamship Trent.
What’s surprising
is the commissioners did not keep their travel plans under wraps? They snuck
through the Union blockade at Charleston, but once they reached Cuba, they
announced their plans in public.
On October 29, the Yorkville Enquirer ran an article that
said, “the steamer Theodora, which
ran the blockade with Messrs. Mason and Slidell, Confederate Commissioners to
Europe, has arrived at Fernandina, Florida, having landed them safely at
Cardenas, Cuba.” Later in the article, they bragged, “this has all been done in
the face of Mr. Lincoln’s blockade.”
On its second day
out of Havana, the USS San Jacinto
approached the Trent in the narrowest part of the Bahama Channel near
the Paredon Grand Light House. When the San
Jacinto spotted the Trent, they fired a shot over its bow and displayed the
American colors. All their ports were open, the guns run out, and the crew at
their battle stations.
As
the San Jacinto moved closer, it
fired a shell from a large caliber swivel gun that burst in the water near the Trent. An officer on the San Jacinto said, “A shot from the pivot
gun was fired across her bow; she hoisted English colors,” but showed no
disposition to slow down. “We hoisted the star-spangled banner, and as soon as
she was close upon us, fired a shot across her bow, which brought her to.”
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| James Mason |
Captain Moir of the Trent demanded to know what the San Jacinto meant by firing on her. Captain Charles Wilkes of the San Jacinto said he wanted to board the ship. So a boat filled with thirty heavily armed men was lowered from the side of the San Jacinto.
When he boarded the
Trent, Lieutenant Fairfax told
Captain Moir he had information the Confederate Commissioners were on board and
should be surrendered to him. When the Trent
resisted, two more boats were dropped over the side of the San Jacinto and surrounded the ship.
Lieutenant Fairfax
forcibly removed Mason and Slidell and their secretaries from the Trent. However, Mason’s wife and
daughter refused to leave the Trent
and continued their voyage to England.
After Captain
Wilkes took his prisoners, he sailed to Boston rather than a Federal port in
New York or Hampton Roads. When the San
Jacinto arrived at Boston, everyone went wild over the news of the capture
of the commissioners. “The Bostonians completely lost their heads and made
Captain Wilkes lose his,” wrote Admiral
David Dixon Porter.
Porter did not
understand all the fuss and excitement. The commissioners were just men and not
“important” men, so the South could easily replace them. Capturing them did nothing to help the war effort. And
yet, everywhere in America, politicians, people, and the press viewed the
capture as a significant victory. Initially, Congress commended Wilkes for the capture and made provisions to strike a gold
medal honoring him.
Wiser heads might
have prevailed if any other commander had taken the prisoners off the Trent.
However, Captain Charles Wilkes was different. He was a genuine American hero.
He joined the navy in 1818 at thirteen, had commanded the American Exploring
Expedition in the 1830s, and had later written a five-volume history of the
journey. The British were so impressed with his accomplishments that the Geographical Society of London
awarded him a gold medal for his services.
Calmer heads were
not as sure taking the commissioners was such a good thing. Five days after the
incident, William Seward instructed Charles Francis Adams that Captain Wilkes
had acted on his own accord. However, the government was open to discussing the
matter once England’s position was known. Earl Russell expressed the same
feeling. He wrote Lord Lyons saying the government was “willing to believe that
the naval officer who committed the act was not acting in compliance with any
authority from his government.” He was sure the American government knew
Britain could not allow the abuse.
Abraham Lincoln was
a realist. While he appreciated what Wilkes had done, he understood he might
need to release Mason and Slidell to keep the peace with England. But he
feared, “the traitors will prove to be white elephants…if Great Britain shall
now protest the act and demand their release, we must give them up, apologize
for the act of a violation of our own doctrines.”
Captain Charles Wilkes
Charles Francis Adams said the Confederate Commissioners were taken off the Trent on November 8. News of the capture reached Washington on November 16 and London on November 27. Adams said the time frame was crucial to understanding the crisis. The “United States went crazy” over the news of the capture. When the “storm of approval” reached London, they were incensed.
On November 30,
Earl Russel denounced the seizure of the Confederate Commissioners as “an act
of violence which was an affront to the British flag and a violation of
international law.” The only solution was to return Mason, Slidell, McFarland,
and Eustis to the British.
Lord Russell wrote
Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, to say he thought the United
States would come around and deliver the commissioners to him. But privately,
he told him, “If it was not done in seven days, Lyons was to leave Washington
with all members of the legation and to repair immediately to London.”
The alternative was
war with England.
While negotiations
were going on, England was preparing for war with the United States. When news
of the seizure of the commissioners reached London, the British had geared up
for a fight. They started raising troops
and getting ready to move arms, munitions, and men to bases in Canada.
The cause of the
dispute seems inconsequential now, but at the time, it came close to sparking
an international incident.
The issue that
ignited the incident was not the capture of the Confederate Commissioners at
sea; it was that Captain Wilkes had not followed the proper procedure for
taking contraband and prizes. The Washington Evening Star reported, “That though Capt. Wilkes might lawfully
have subjected the Trent to the judgment of an Admiralty Court; he had no right
to retain any person on board of her, as he did restrain the rebel
commissioners.” The way they phrased it, the arrest had “questionable authority
in law.”
Admiral David Dixon
Porter said, “it was very plain to able jurists that the position we had on
account of the capture of Mason and Slidell was not a defensible one, and the
first act of the government should have been to disavow the act of Captain
Wilkes and order him to proceed to the nearest British port and land the party
he arrested.”
Porter said it
would have been different if the Trent
had “sailed from any Southern port” or had taken any passengers from any
vessels at sea. Even then, Wilkes should have taken
the Trent to a Court of Admiralty to decide the case.
He did not do that.
Instead, “Captain Wilkes instituted a Court of Admiralty on the high seas.”
The New York Herald described the incident as an “error of
procedure…which does not affect the merits of the case.” In their opinion,
whatever the decision, “the guilt of the Trent
remains.”
General Winfield
Scott agreed. He said, “it is very clear
that our government had sufficient grounds for presuming itself in the
right…The pretense that we ought to have taken the Trent into port and had her
condemned by a prize court in order to justify our seizure of her passengers
furnished a very narrow basis on which to fix a controversy between two great
nations. Stated an offense would have
been less if it had been greater. The wrong done to the British would have been
mitigated if, instead of seizing the four rebels, we had seized the ship,
detained all her passengers for weeks, and confiscated her cargo.”
Instead, General
Scott turned the situation around. He said Wilkes had taken the path of least
harm towards Great Britain. But in his opinion, “an event so mutually disastrous
as a war between England and America cannot occur without some other and graver
provocation than has yet been given by either nation.”
Whatever Scott
thought about the Trent Affair, Charles Francis Adams was involved in the
negotiations in London from the beginning. He said: “There is no question that
Great Britain was in dead earnest in its demand for immediate reparation and
acted accordingly. The arsenals were busy; all available forces were mobilized,
and troops embarked for Canada.”
On December 26, the
United States agreed to give up the commissioners.
Abraham Lincoln
based his decision on the reason America fought the War of 1812, “that foreign
nations had no right to search the vessels of another power to obtain
possession of their subjects.”
He told himself he
could get back at England later for the slight. Lincoln said it was a “pretty
bitter pill to swallow, but I contented myself with believing that England’s
triumph in the matter would be short-lived, and after ending our war
successfully, we should be so powerful that we could call England to account
for all the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us.”
William Seward
delivered the American response on December 26. It did not accept blame but
argued Wilkes had a right to stop the Trent
because Mason and Slidell were contraband of war.” However, in this case,
Wilkes did not follow proper procedures. He should have seized the ship and
taken it to a Federal port to have it condemned before a Court of Admiralty.
Privately, Seward
wrote, “in yielding to the demands of England, we not only secure her
neutrality in the matter of this Southern rebellion beyond the reach of quibble
or pretext but in maintaining our old grounds we secure the sympathy and
goodwill of France,” and all the other Continental nations. The Confederate
States gave up any opportunity to secure foreign help or intervention during
the Civil War by yielding to England. It was not a bad tradeoff.
Admiral Porter
thought along the same lines as Abraham Lincoln. “We made a good fight on
paper, though we could not make it on the water.” He did not think we could
beat England in 1861. But three years later, with our naval build-up for the
civil war, defeating the British would
have been a sure thing.
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