Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Trent Affair was a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Britain that unfolded in late 1861 during the American Civil War. On the 8th of November 1861, the Union warship San Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British mail packet Trent in the Bahama Channel and forcibly removed two Confederate envoys, James Murray Mason and John Slidell, nearly provoking a war between the two nations.
Charles Wilkes was a Union naval captain commanding the steam frigate San Jacinto. He intercepted Trent after learning from a newspaper in Cienfuegos that Mason and Slidell were scheduled to leave Havana on November 7. Wilkes adopted the legal position that the two Confederate envoys qualified as contraband of war subject to seizure, a position historians have concluded had no legal precedent. He was described by contemporaries as a stubborn, overzealous, and impulsive officer.
James Murray Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana were Confederate envoys chosen by President Jefferson Davis to press the Confederacy's case for diplomatic recognition in Britain and France. Mason had chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1847 to 1860, and Slidell had served as a negotiator at the end of the Mexican War. They carried written arguments against the legality of the Union blockade and were to lobby for possible financial and military support.
Britain responded with widespread outrage. The British government demanded an apology and the release of Mason and Slidell, and gave the United States a seven-day deadline to reply or face closure of the British Legation in Washington. Military preparations were accelerated, including plans to ship thousands of troops to Canada. Prince Albert, ill with typhoid, reviewed and softened the ultimatum before it was sent, allowing Washington a face-saving way to disavow Wilkes's actions.
Lincoln released the two Confederate envoys to avoid war with Britain. He concluded that since the United States had fought Britain in the War of 1812 for insisting on the very right to stop and search neutral ships that Wilkes had exercised, any British protest required compliance. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase also argued that releasing the prisoners was necessary to protect the American economy, which was already under strain.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, reviewed the British government's draft ultimatum on the 30th of November 1861, though he was already ill with the typhoid that would shortly take his life. He judged the ultimatum too belligerent and composed a softened version suggesting language that would allow Washington to disavow Wilkes's actions and avoid a formal humiliating apology. His revision was incorporated into the official dispatch sent to Seward, providing the diplomatic room needed for a peaceful resolution.