The British prime minister, despite his advanced age, remained firmly in control of British foreign policy at the start of the Civil War. He recommended dispatching three regiments that might form the foundation of a militia to Britain’s North American provinces. Such a move, Palmerston decided, would provide “a useful hint to Seward and Lincoln and their associates.” Victoria agreed that it was “of great importance that we should be strong in Canada.” British leaders ultimately dispatched a steamship packed with artillery to North America. As the year wore on, Palmerston argued for sending even more troops. The deployments, he suggested, were already having “a wholesome effect upon the tone and temper of Lincoln and Seward.”37
In late May, Cassius Marcellus Clay, the president’s appointee to the St. Petersburg post, stopped in London on his way to Russia and met with Palmerston at his home. The prime minister received Clay “in a very kindly spirit,” the American reported home. Still, “I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was,” Clay wrote in a letter to Lincoln. “They hoped for our ruin! They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the South or the North. They hate both.”38
British opinion about the conflict was actually far more varied than Clay’s analysis. Palmerston, for one, recognized that it would be folly to plunge England into America’s conflict. Britain’s “best and true policy,” he told his foreign minister in October 1861, “seems to be to go on as we have begun, and to keep quite clear of the conflict between North and South.… The only thing to do seems to be to lie on our oars, and to give no pretext to the Washingtonians to quarrel with us, while on the other hand, we maintain our rights and those of our fellow countrymen.” The prime minister acknowledged that there “have been cases in Europe in which allied Powers have said to fighting parties … ‘In the Queen’s name, I bid you to drop your swords.’ But those cases are rare and peculiar. The love of quarreling and fighting is inherent in man, and to prevent its indulgence is to impose restraints on natural liberty.”39
A Gross Outrage
As winter approached, however, Palmerston found it increasingly difficult to simply ignore the American conflict. “It may be,” the prime minister wrote the Duke of Newcastle on November 12, “that the Washington Gov’t may not wish or intend to declare war against us without adequate cause.” Still, he added, “their policy is to heap indignities upon us, and they are encouraged to do so by what they imagine to be the defenseless state of our North American Provinces.”40
The same day, the prime minister wrote the Union minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, asking for a meeting. “My Dear Sir,” the prime minister began, “I would be very glad to have a few minutes conversation with you; could you without inconvenience call upon me today at any time between one and two?” Adams was surprised that Palmerston had asked to see him on such short notice. The prime minister had ignored the usual channels, including his own foreign minister. Adams showed up at Palmerston’s home in London’s Piccadilly district at the appointed time. He swept past a pair of flaming torches into the prime minister’s darkened library, which was lit only by flickering gas lamps.41
Tensions between Britain and the United States had been simmering all fall. Washington and London had exchanged a series of “tart” dispatches. Lincoln and Seward worried that Britain was angling to recognize the Confederacy. Palmerston and his ministers, still spooked by Seward’s belligerent spring behavior, feared the Federals wanted a foreign war. “Every report, public, official and private, that comes to us from the Northern States of America,” Palmerston wrote an acquaintance in November, “tends to shew that our relations with the Washington government are on the most precarious footing and that Seward and Lincoln may at any time and on any pretence come to a rupture with us.” Palmerston’s foreign minister warned him a few days later that “it is the business of Seward to feed the mob with sacrifices every day, and we happen to be the most grateful food he can offer.”42
Now, in the dark of his London library, Palmerston pressed Adams on his government’s intentions. The prime minister had become particularly concerned about an American ship called the James Adger, which had been loitering off the coast of Britain. Palmerston feared that the Adger intended to seize the Trent and its Confederate passengers—a move that he was sure would ignite public anger in Britain. The prime minister complained, somewhat off point, that the Adger’s captain had been getting drunk on “some excellent brandy” during his stay in Britain. Adams later recalled that Palmerston warned of a hostile British response if the Adger’s captain, “after enjoying the hospitality of this country, filling his ship with coals, and with other supplies, and filling his own stomach with brandy (and here he laughed in his characteristic way)43 should within sight of the shore commit an act which would be felt as offensive to the national flag.” The prime minister stressed that seizing the Trent would do the Federal cause little good in Britain—and would probably inspire great “prejudice” among ordinary Englishmen. Palmerston later reported to Queen Victoria that Adams had assured him that the Adger “had orders not to meddle with any vessel under any foreign flag.”44
What neither man knew was that Wilkes had already seized the Trent four days earlier off the Cuban coast. The news arrived in London on November 27. Karl Marx, then a journalist living in London, observed that “the electric telegraph immediately flashed” the news “to all parts of Great Britain.” Rumors of war flew through the city. “Every normal Englishman,” Marx reported, “went to bed with the conviction that he would go to sleep in a state of peace but wake up in a state of war.” The British stock exchange plunged on war fears, becoming “a stage of stormy scenes,” as Marx put it. The author of the Communist Manifesto, a shrewd observer of economic trends, wrote his friend Frederick Engels that he wished he had “the means to exploit the stupidity” of the stock exchange “during this fool period.”45
Britain’s most influential newspaper tried to tamp down popular passions. The London Times editors found it hard to believe that the Federals would intentionally provoke a conflict and counseled against responding with “an outburst of passion.” Another newspaper blended swaggering nationalism with doubts about whether war would actually erupt. “We are pretty well accustomed to Yankee bluster and hot headedness,” the Cardiff Mercury reported, “but we cannot think that they [the United States] will be so utterly blind as to provoke a collision with a power which with little difficulty could blow to the four winds their dwarf fleet and shapeless mass of incoherent squads.”46
After ordering a review of the legal precedents, Palmerston convened a meeting of his cabinet on the afternoon of November 29. He told his foreign minister that he thought Britain should “demand from Seward and Lincoln apology and liberation of the captives.” If the Americans refused, Palmerston suggested that Britain should withdraw its minister in Washington, rather than have him “remain [as] the representative of a country deliberately insulted.” In the meantime, the prime minister wanted to halt all arms exports to the federal government. “We have reason to suppose that Seward and Lincoln mean a rupture with England,” he told his foreign minister. Under such circumstances he considered it “folly, amounting to imbecility” to allow British weapons to reach the bluecoats. Palmerston told the queen that the cabinet believed “a gross outrage and violation of international law has been committed.” He advised Victoria to “demand reparation and redress.”47
Palmerston was convinced that Washington had planned the seizure, hoping to provoke a foreign war. The prime minister had heard rumors that the Lincoln administration had approved Wilkes’s action beforehand at a White House cabinet meeting. Some Americans had initially believed the same thing; Seward’s close ally Thurlow Weed wrote the secretary of state shortly after the capture of Mason and Slidell explaining that General Winfield Scott had told him in Paris that such a seizure had been discussed in Washington for weeks beforehand. “You have, I suppose, well considered [the consequences],” Weed wrote Seward. (Scott la
ter argued that his comments had been taken out of context.)
Palmerston was nevertheless miffed when he heard that Lincoln had dismissed the affair to a visiting Canadian official, sniffing, “Oh, that’ll be got along with.” The British prime minister ordered his foreign minister to draft a blunt dispatch demanding that the envoys be released within seven days of receipt of the note. The same evening he shipped the text off to Windsor Castle for the queen’s approval. Palmerston believed that the British demands would come as a “Thunder Clap” to the American president.48
Britain’s monarchs, however, were far less eager for a war. The mood at Windsor Castle was already grim. Prince Albert had been ailing for several weeks and felt “thoroughly miserable” when the dispatch arrived. The prince consort had been haunting the palace halls like a walking ghost, shivering despite the fur coat he had wrapped around his aching body. Albert felt “as if cold water were being poured down his back,” Victoria worried to her diary. The prince consort “could eat no breakfast and looked very wretched.” His incoming correspondence on the morning of December 1 contained nothing to lighten his mood. The prince consort complained that the Palmerston ministry’s draft dispatch was “somewhat meager.” Despite his illness—he could “scarcely hold his pen,” Victoria reported—Albert decided to rewrite it himself.49
Albert softened the cabinet’s language, although he still demanded a “suitable apology” from the Americans. His primary goal was to give Lincoln a way to save face. “Her majesty’s government,” he wrote, “bearing in mind the friendly relations which have long subsisted between Great Britain and the United States, are willing to believe that the United States naval officer who committed this aggression was not acting in compliance with any authority from his government.” Or, the prince consort added, perhaps Wilkes “greatly misunderstood the instructions which he had received.” Victoria and Albert then returned the text to Palmerston and his cabinet. While the British monarchs approved the text “upon the whole,” they explained, they would prefer to include some “expression of hope” that Wilkes had acted alone.50
Palmerston, rather than picking a fight with the queen, said he thought Albert’s changes “excellent.” He swiftly dispatched the new text to the British minister in Washington. “What we want is a plain Yes or a plain No to our very simple demands,” Palmerston’s foreign minister wrote to the British envoy in Washington, “and we want that plain Yes or No within seven days of the communication of the dispatch.” Over the following week the prime minister received heartening indications that American expats were urging their government to release the Confederate envoys. Still, Palmerston entertained little hope of a peaceful resolution. “The best thing,” Palmerston’s foreign minister mused, “would be if Seward could be turned out and a rational man put in his place.” Absent such a dramatic move, the prime minister worried, “we shall not get what we ask for, without fighting for it.”51
Not all Britons were so sanguine about the results of a prospective war. John Bright, a liberal member of Parliament who had cultivated close ties with the Lincoln White House, argued that a conflict would destroy Britain’s improving relationship with its former colonies. At a speech in Rochdale on December 4, Bright lamented the British reaction to the Trent news—“every sword leaping from its scabbard, and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses.” The statesman criticized Britons who jealously wanted to see the United States dismembered for geopolitical reasons. The American population was growing so rapidly that it would soon overtake Britain’s, Bright warned. “When that time comes,” he concluded, “I pray that it may not be said” that “in the darkest hour of their country’s trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of their children.”52
Nevertheless, two days later, on December 6, a fleet of reinforcements sailed for British Canada. Americans in London reported home to Seward that they were seeing Confederate flags unfurled throughout the city. “In the streets,” wrote one correspondent, “I noticed two boys carrying miniature trays of secession flags for sale.” Wagonloads of guns were spotted leaving the Tower of London. Eventually the Palmerston ministry would dispatch more than eleven thousand troops on eighteen transport ships to North America. The prime minister was satisfied with the show of force. If the Americans gave in, he told the queen, the result would be “honourable for England and humiliating for the United States.” If, on the other hand, the Federals stood by Wilkes’s seizure of Mason and Slidell, Britain would be well positioned to inflict a crushing blow on her former colonies.53
Send On Your Burial Cases
Lincoln could be a melancholy man. He often expected the worst. As the autumn of 1861 unfolded, he had good reason for concern. An old Illinois acquaintance, Senator Lyman Trumbull, warned that if the Northern army did not strike decisively by winter, foreign governments would be certain to recognize the Confederacy. “Action, action, is what we want and must have,” Trumbull wrote. Yet when Lincoln’s army finally did move, in late October, the results were disastrous. Confederate troops crushed the Federals at Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, sending the president’s men retreating down a ravine toward a river at its base. Many of the Union troops simply drowned. Among the casualties: Lincoln’s old Springfield friend, the English-born Edward D. Baker. Lincoln was devastated. The president sobbed when he learned of Baker’s death. He walked home from the telegraph office where he got the news with his head bowed, tears streaming down his pale face. When a sentinel saluted as he passed, Lincoln just ignored him.54
After a brutal year, the Trent seizure must have initially seemed like redemption to Lincoln. The president desperately needed military victories in order to convince a skeptical Europe that the North could win the war. Furthermore, in accordance with international law, the Union blockade would be considered valid by the European powers only if it proved to be effective. Now Lincoln’s growing navy was finally making him proud. The New York Herald reported shortly after the seizure that the president would insist on keeping the captives. Lincoln had “declared emphatically,” the paper’s correspondent wrote, that Mason and Slidell “should not be surrendered by this government, even if their detention should cost a war with Great Britain.” The same day the president wrote to one expert on international law exultantly lauding “the capture of Mason & Slidell!” Years later Seward recalled (perhaps self-servingly) that Lincoln had “said very decidedly that he would not give [Mason and Slidell] up.”55
Lincoln’s enthusiasm did not last long. What first appeared as a rare naval victory was quickly becoming a serious crisis. After Lincoln got over his initial euphoria, he developed grave “doubts, misgivings, and regrets,” reported Gideon Welles. If the Trent seizure inflamed British opinion, the benefits of appearing strong would be canceled out. Almost as troubling for the former prairie lawyer, British statesmen appeared to be justified in their outrage. At a cabinet meeting soon after the incident, the president worried that international law was actually on Britain’s side, adding that he favored the diplomats’ release. Lincoln ultimately explained that he was determined to avoid having “two wars on his hands at a time.”56
And yet despite Lincoln’s best judgment, it would be near impossible to simply set the captives free. Public opinion, Lincoln had once remarked, “is everything in this country.” Now that amorphous force was running strongly in favor of keeping the Confederate envoys. The president fretted to Welles about the American public’s “overwhelming” hostility toward Mason and Slidell. It would be difficult, under the circumstances, to resist their calls to harshly punish the Confederate envoys, he said. The Russian minister in Washington wrote home to his government that Lincoln wanted to release the men and issue an apology. Still, the American president desperately needed the support of his constituents if he was going to continue to maintain the war effort at home. The Russian minister complained that “demagogues” in Washington “intoxicated” by recent na
val victories were urging Lincoln to hold on to the Confederate envoys.57
Lincoln found himself boxed in by his own subordinates. Soldiers bivouacked at Willard’s Hotel, around the corner from the White House, threatened to quit the Union army if the president released Mason and Slidell. Welles wrote to Wilkes approving his actions, making the capture that much more difficult for Lincoln to disavow. The captain’s conduct, Lincoln’s naval secretary wrote, had the administration’s “emphatic approval.” State Department adviser Edward Everett, a former minister to Britain and secretary of state, began giving public speeches in support of Wilkes. “The detention,” he cried, “was perfectly lawful, the capture was perfectly lawful, their confinement in Fort Warren will be perfectly lawful.” A few weeks later Everett published his views of the incident in the widely read New York Tribune. Another State Department employee, according to a report in the New York Times, argued forcefully that British leaders would “not take exception to [Wilkes’s] act” since international law classified both weapons and diplomatic personnel the same way—“sandwiching Mason and Slidell [together] as contraband of war.”58
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