Trent Affair

• 1. Introduction

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  The Trent Affair began on the 8th of November 1861, when a Union warship fired two shots across the bow of a British Royal Mail packet steamer in the Bahama Channel. The second shot landed directly in front of the vessel, forcing it to stop. What happened next nearly dragged the United States into a second war while it was already fighting its first. Armed sailors boarded the British ship, seized two Confederate diplomats, and left the vessel to continue its voyage. Within weeks, British troops were marching overland through winter snow toward Canada, financial markets were behaving as though war was a certainty, and the British government was drafting ultimatums with a seven-day deadline. The questions the affair raises are still striking: How did a single captain's impulsive decision nearly shatter Anglo-American relations? What did Britain's reaction reveal about its own precarious strategic position? And what made Abraham Lincoln, who initially celebrated the capture, ultimately conclude that the prisoners were, in his own words, white elephants?

• 2. The Confederate Gamble on Cotton

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  Jefferson Davis believed from the very beginning of the Confederacy that European textile mills depended so heavily on Southern cotton that Britain and France would have no choice but to recognize the new nation. Historian Charles Hubbard described his approach plainly: Davis left foreign policy to others in government and tended to expect events to accomplish diplomatic objectives rather than pursuing an aggressive diplomatic effort. The men Davis selected as his emissaries to Europe were chosen for political and personal reasons, not for their diplomatic potential. This mattered enormously because the Confederate cause in Europe depended almost entirely on those men making the right arguments at the right moments.

  The Confederacy's first European delegation, assembled in February 1861, consisted of William Lowndes Yancey, Pierre Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann. Their instructions from Confederate Secretary of State Robert Toombs called for them to open diplomatic relations and negotiate treaties of friendship, commerce, and navigation. The instructions included a long legal argument on states' rights and the right of secession, but conspicuously omitted any discussion of the Union blockade of Southern ports, privateering, or slavery. The absence of those topics was a direct consequence of Confederate confidence that cotton would do the persuading.

  By August 1861, Yancey was sick, frustrated, and ready to resign. The British had refused any formal recognition, and Confederate ships had gained only the limited status of belligerency rather than diplomatic standing. Davis concluded he needed different representatives in London and Paris and selected John Slidell of Louisiana and James Mason of Virginia. Slidell had served as a negotiator during the Mexican War. Mason had chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1847 to 1860. Both men carried detailed written arguments against the legality of the Union blockade, and both were bound for Britain and France to press the case for full diplomatic recognition.

• 3. The Pursuit and Interception

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  The Union government tracked Mason and Slidell's movements daily, receiving intelligence on their preparations to leave Charleston, South Carolina. Their original plan to run the Union blockade directly aboard Nashville collapsed because the main channel into Charleston was guarded by five Union ships and Nashville's draft was too deep for the side channels. A local cotton broker named George Trenholm solved the problem by paying $10,000 to charter a shallow-draft steamer called the Gordon, receiving half the cargo space on the return voyage in exchange. Renamed Theodora, the ship slipped out of Charleston at one in the morning on October 12, evaded the Union fleet, and arrived at Nassau in the Bahamas two days later.

  From Nassau the route grew complicated. Theodora missed a British steamer to St. Thomas, turned southwest toward Cuba, arrived off the Cuban coast on October 15 with nearly empty coal bunkers, and learned from a Spanish warship that the next British mail packet would not depart Havana for three weeks. The two diplomats waited in Cárdenas before making an overland trip to Havana. While they waited, Union naval intelligence mistakenly believed they had escaped aboard Nashville, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles dispatched the sidewheel steamer James Adger to intercept Nashville in British waters.

  The Union steam frigate San Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, was in St. Thomas on October 13 when Wilkes learned from a newspaper that Mason and Slidell were scheduled to leave Havana on November 7 aboard the British mail packet Trent. Wilkes recognized that the ship would have to pass through the narrow Bahama Channel, the only deepwater route between Cuba and the shallow Grand Bahama Bank. He discussed legal options with his second in command, Lieutenant D. M. Fairfax, reviewed law books on the subject, and adopted the position that Mason and Slidell qualified as contraband of war subject to seizure. Historians have concluded there was no legal precedent for that position. Treasury officer George Harrington had already warned Secretary of State Seward about Wilkes, writing that he had a superabundance of self-esteem and a deficiency of judgment and that when he commanded his great exploring mission he court-martialed nearly all his officers.

• 4. The Boarding of the Trent

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  Trent left Havana on November 7 as scheduled, carrying Mason, Slidell, their secretaries, and Slidell's wife and children. Just as Wilkes had predicted, she entered the Bahama Channel, where San Jacinto was waiting. Around noon on November 8, lookouts spotted Trent flying the Union Jack. San Jacinto fired a warning shot across the bow, which Captain James Moir of Trent ignored. A second shot from San Jacinto's forward pivot gun landed directly in front of the ship and Trent stopped.

  Wilkes handed Lieutenant Fairfax written orders to demand the ship's papers and passenger list, to take Mason, Slidell, and their secretaries as prisoners, and to seize any dispatches. Fairfax was certain Wilkes was creating an international incident and, not wanting to expand its scope, ordered his armed escort to remain in the cutter as he boarded. Captain Moir refused to supply a passenger list and refused to permit a search of the vessel for contraband. Mason and Slidell identified themselves voluntarily but formally refused to go willingly. They were escorted to the cutter without physically resisting. Fairfax's failure to force a search of the vessel meant no Confederate dispatches were found. Mason's daughter would later write, in 1906, that the Confederate dispatch bag had been secured by a Royal Navy commander who was a passenger on Trent and later delivered to the Confederate envoys in London, a clear violation of the Queen's Neutrality Proclamation.

  Wilkes chose not to take Trent to a prize court, as international law technically required when contraband was found aboard a neutral vessel. Fairfax had argued against seizure of the ship because transferring crew to Trent would leave San Jacinto dangerously undermanned. Wilkes agreed, and Trent was allowed to continue to St. Thomas while San Jacinto turned toward Hampton Roads, Virginia, arriving on November 15.

• 5. American Celebration and Second Thoughts

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  Most Northerners learned of the capture on November 16 when it appeared in afternoon newspapers. By November 18 the press seemed, as contemporary observers noted, universally engulfed in a massive wave of chauvinistic elation. Harvard law professor Theophilus Parsons defended Wilkes's action, as did Caleb Cushing, a former Attorney General. On December 2, Congress passed unanimously a resolution thanking Wilkes for his brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct and proposed he receive a gold medal.

  The celebration did not last. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles expressed what many felt when he wrote to Wilkes in terms that praised the Navy Department's approval while cautioning that the failure to take Trent to a prize court must by no means be permitted to constitute a precedent. The New York Times claimed on November 24 that it could find no actual legal precedent for the seizure. Critics began to note that Wilkes's actions closely resembled the search and impressment practices the United States had always opposed since its founding and which had led to the War of 1812 with Britain.

  Elder statesmen James Buchanan, Thomas Ewing, Lewis Cass, and Robert J. Walker all publicly argued for releasing the prisoners. Lincoln, who had been enthusiastic about the capture initially, arrived at a clear-eyed conclusion. He stated that he feared the prisoners would prove to be white elephants, that the United States must stick to American principles about the rights of neutrals, and that since the country had fought Britain for insisting on the right to do precisely what Wilkes had done, any British protest would require release, an apology, and an acknowledgment that Britain had been wrong for sixty years. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase added a financial argument: he knew New York banks were planning to suspend gold payments, and he told the cabinet that releasing Mason and Slidell was annoying but necessary to support the economy. Finance scholar Gordon Warren concluded that the diplomatic crisis actively worsened the financial crisis.

• 6. Britain on the Edge of War

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  Britain first learned of the capture on November 27, when news arrived in Southampton. Much of the public and many newspapers immediately perceived it as an outrageous insult to national honor. The London Chronicle declared that the Americans, with their dwarf fleet and shapeless mass of incoherent squads, were fancying themselves the equal of France by land and Great Britain by sea. A letter from an American visitor to Seward reported that the people were frantic with rage and that 999 out of 1,000 would declare for immediate war. Yet one voice cut against the grain: Karl Marx, then living in exile in London, organized British workers to hold public protest meetings in Brighton and elsewhere opposing any British coalition with the Confederacy. Marx later wrote that the working classes had shown their indestructible excellence by opposing the warmongers despite widespread misery.

  At the government level, Palmerston reportedly opened the emergency cabinet meeting of November 29 by throwing his hat on the table and declaring he did not know whether the cabinet was going to stand the American action, but he would be damned if he would. The Law Officers of the Crown confirmed that Wilkes's actions were illegal and unjustifiable by international law. The British demanded an apology and the release of the prisoners and gave Seward seven days to reply. Lord Lyons's private instructions were to close the British Legation in Washington and return home if a satisfactory response was not forthcoming.

  Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, was ill with the typhoid that would shortly take his life. He nevertheless reviewed the draft dispatches, decided the ultimatum was too belligerent, and composed a softened version. His revision suggested language allowing Washington to disavow Wilkes's actions without a humiliating formal apology, opening the door to a face-saving resolution. The British dispatches sailed on December 1 aboard the Europa and reached Washington on December 18.

• 7. Military Buildup and Resolution

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  While diplomats waited for replies, both sides prepared for war. Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Milne commanded the Royal Navy's North America and West Indies station and had been warning London about inadequate defenses throughout 1861. He had reported that Jamaica's installations featured unserviceable guns, decayed cartridges, corroded shot, and the absence of stores of all kinds, and that he had only a single ship available for any special service that might suddenly be required. When the Trent crisis broke, Secretary of War Sir George Lewis proposed within a week to send thirty thousand rifles, an artillery battery, and some officers to Canada, with one regiment and one battery of artillery departing almost immediately.

  During December the British managed to ship 11,000 troops using 18 transport ships, with plans to send an additional 28,400 men before the month was out. Some units traveled by sea to Halifax in Nova Scotia, since the Saint Lawrence River begins to ice up in December. One regiment, the 96th, reached New Brunswick aboard the Calcutta in February; the other half of its contingent had to abandon their voyage in the Azores when their ship, the Victoria, nearly sank. Canada's existing defenses were in poor shape. Historian Gordon Warren recorded Williams's assessment that forts were either decaying or nonexistent and that the amount of necessary remedial work was stupefying. The Sedentary Militia, legally composed of all Canadian males between 18 and 60, existed largely on paper, and the volunteer force of some 4,422 men received only six to twelve days of annual training.

  The Lincoln administration resolved the crisis before war became unavoidable. The government released Mason and Slidell, and Seward disavowed Wilkes's actions, though without a formal apology. The two Confederate envoys resumed their voyage to Europe. Their mission ultimately failed: neither Britain nor France granted the Confederacy diplomatic recognition. Britain's principal contribution to the affair's legacy may have been Prince Albert's final act of diplomacy, softening the ultimatum that arrived in Washington on December 18, just days before the cabinet voted to release the prisoners.