The rising tensions and Prince Albert’s death cast a pall over London. The massive church bell at St. Paul’s Cathedral filled the city with “the dull boom of its sad tones.” Merchants shuttered shops, and Londoners wandered the streets wearing black under the gray winter skies. At the American legation, diplomats were instructed to write all dispatches on special black-edged paper in honor of the late prince consort. The atmosphere in London, wrote Henry Adams, the son of the American minister, would have “gorged a glutton of gloom.”80
The American diplomats displayed little faith in their bosses in Washington. Charles Francis Adams complained that Lincoln was “unfit for his place.” Seward, too, received low marks for his statesmanship. The secretary of state had once remarked that he was an enigma to himself. His actions certainly baffled his men overseas. Henry Adams acknowledged that he had no idea what the secretary of state was thinking. If he intended to provoke a war, Adams admitted, or even to “run as close as he can without touching, then I say that Mr. Seward is the greatest criminal we’ve had yet.” The young diplomatic secretary believed Britain was wholly justified in its outrage. If the British navy had stopped an American mail packet in similar circumstances, Adams insisted, he and his countrymen would have “jumped out of our boots.”81
The intentions of British leaders appeared equally opaque. In a letter to Frederick Engels, Karl Marx wondered what Palmerston was really thinking. “If Pam absolutely wants war,” Marx wrote his friend, using the prime minister’s nickname, “he can, of course, bring it about.” But the German émigré did not believe Palmerston genuinely wanted one. In any case, Marx expected Lincoln to back down, removing the pretext for war. The British prime minister’s real goal, Marx speculated, was to put pressure on the Americans to recognize the Declaration of Paris, a treaty guaranteeing the rights of neutrals. Neither side had an interest in a full-scale war. Still, the risk always remained that all the blustering could spin out of control. “It is, of course, possible that the Yankees will not yield,” Marx told Engels, “and then Pam will be compelled to go to war by his preparations and rodomontades so far. Still, I would bet a hundred to one against it.”82
Palmerston, still sick and in bed, believed that Lincoln and Seward were “in a Fool’s Paradise about the Trent affair.” The Federals may try to avoid a “direct refusal” of the British demands, he speculated, but he believed that Britain would ultimately be forced to fight. London’s Morning Post, which Palmerston was said to control, wondered whether a government “elected but a few months since by the popular choice” and “depending exclusively for existence on popular support” could resist the clamor for war. “The answer to this question must, we fear, be in the negative.” Palmerston’s foreign minister remained more hopeful. “I still incline to think Lincoln will submit,” he wrote the prime minister, “but not until the clock is 59 minutes past 11.” Palmerston expected “some evasive dodge.” He wondered whether Lincoln might just let the two prisoners slip across the border with Canada or Mexico.83
Palmerston was right in one respect. Lincoln had at first hoped to stall for time. On the afternoon of December 21, the president was visiting with Browning at the White House when the subject of the Trent came up again. Lincoln explained that the British minister in Washington—honoring Seward’s plea for time—had still not officially presented the Palmerston ministry’s demands. Still, Lincoln told Browning that “he had an inkling of what they were, and feared trouble.” The president’s old friend argued that it would be best to do everything possible to avoid a “rupture” with Britain, “if it could be done without humiliation and dishonor.” Lincoln said that he agreed completely.
Both men believed that a neutral arbitrator might peacefully defuse the crisis. In early December the president had drafted a memo to British officials proposing arbitration and stating that “this government has intended no affront to the British flag, or to the British nation.” Now, as he visited with Browning, Lincoln pulled out the document and read it to his old friend. In the dispatch, which Lincoln intended to be sent under Seward’s signature, the president reiterated that Wilkes had acted “without orders from, or expectation of, the government.” Although Lincoln added that he wanted to discuss several points that he considered extenuating circumstances, he did write that he would consider a British request for reparations. The text of Lincoln’s document seems to have adopted some of the language of Bright and Cobden, who had been urging Sumner to lobby for such a proposal. Browning later told his diary that Lincoln’s draft displayed “great force and clearness.” Yet with its slippery excuses and its plea for time, the president’s proposed reply would have been certain to irritate Palmerston. In the end, Lincoln thought better of sending it.84
Lincoln did seem to be having some success shaping public opinion at home. Someone leaked the news to the Daily National Intelligencer that the president was considering “a grand international … abitrament” in response to the British demands. The New York Daily Tribune, a paper with close ties to Lincoln’s Republican Party, also began preparing its readers for the possibility that Mason and Slidell would be released. On December 20 the paper reported that a number of cabinet members were advocating letting the men go. Lincoln himself, the article said, anticipated “a peaceful solution.” The New York Times, which often acted as Seward’s mouthpiece, also suggested that the White House was not likely to press its case too hard.85
Meanwhile, Lincoln and his team scrambled to meet the British deadline. Seward assured the French minister in Washington on December 19 that “we will not have war.” The rational statesmen of Britain and the United States would not fall into conflict “from mere emotion,” the secretary of state maintained. Yet the delicate matter of how exactly the White House would respond to the British ultimatum remained. Even insiders like John Hay conceded that they had no idea what the president would decide. Hay observed a “bewildering flight of white envelopes” soaring “like carrier doves between the British Legation and the Department of State.” The winter weather in Washington only added to the sense of gravity and impending danger. Two days before Christmas, a British journalist marveled at the “tremendous storm” that “drove over the city and shook the houses to the foundation.”86
A Pretty Bitter Pill
As the British deadline approached, Lincoln began to doubt his own arbitration proposal. Such a scheme would simply take too long to unfold. In any case, Palmerston was not open to an equivocal response. Even Sumner, who at one time had favored arbitration, urged Lincoln to just give in. The Massachusetts senator recognized that the president was already “essentially pacific.” On Christmas Eve, Sumner told the president that he favored a “complete” resolution that would avoid “mental reservations which shall hereafter be forged into thunderbolts.” The New York Tribune reported the same day that “both civilians and military men, high in position” were urging Lincoln to release the prisoners.87
Lincoln called an emergency cabinet meeting for Christmas Day. On the sunny and unseasonably warm morning, the president’s men assembled at the White House. Sumner read letters from Cobden and Bright, who urged the president to “make every concession that can be made” rather than risk “the breaking up of your country.” Lincoln’s treasury secretary worried that a war would devastate American commerce. During the four-hour meeting, a missive arrived from the French minister in Washington, who warned the men that the European powers all believed Britain was in the right. Nevertheless, to at least some members of the cabinet, the president appeared to favor holding on to the prisoners.88
Honest Abe may have been dissembling. Considering his recent efforts to quietly prepare the public for the release of the Confederate envoys, it seems unlikely that Lincoln had suddenly changed his mind. One scenario, historian Howard Jones suggests, is that Lincoln “wanted to go on record as standing in opposition while knowing that eventually he would have to turn them over and acknowledge a violation of international law.” Another po
ssibility is that the president, a clever manager of his headstrong cabinet, wanted to let his self-important secretary of state believe that conciliation was his own idea. Seward favored releasing the Confederate envoys outright. At the end of the meeting, Lincoln took his secretary of state aside. “Governor Seward, you will go on, of course, preparing your answer, which, as I understand, will state the reasons why they ought to be given up. Now I have a mind to try my hand at stating the reasons why they ought not to be given up. We will compare the points on each side.”89
Lincoln knew full well that Seward would ultimately win the argument. After a Christmas dinner at the White House, the president told his old friend Orville Browning that “there would be no war with England.” The following day, when the cabinet reassembled, Seward made his case. The secretary of state had “studied up all the works ever written on international law,” Lincoln later recalled, “and came to cabinet meetings loaded to the muzzle with the subject.” The president did not even bother to oppose him. Lincoln’s secretary of state asked why the president had abandoned his own position. “I could not,” Lincoln responded, “make an argument that would satisfy my own mind.” The New York Times published an account of the “special and extraordinary session” the day after Christmas. “It is understood,” the paper’s Washington correspondent wrote, “that our Government is ready to disavow the act of Capt. Wilkes, and to deliver up Mason and Slidell, if that be the only means of purchasing peace with England.” Still, the paper continued, “as a condition of this disavowal and restitution,” Britain would be obliged to stay out of the war.90
Now that Lincoln had made a decision, Seward began reading in key Washington power brokers. The secretary of state hosted a dinner at his Lafayette Square home on the evening of December 27. Attendees included the British writer Anthony Trollope and Kentucky senator John Crittenden, the latter of whom showered the Sewards’ carpet with tobacco spittle. Seward’s daughter Fanny, who had carefully decorated the house with “Christmas greens” for the occasion, marveled at Crittenden’s lack of manners. (She was also repulsed by Mrs. Crittenden, who “had trappings of gilt and velvet on her head enough to furnish a western steamboat and wore seven bracelets on her fat bare arms.”) After dinner the secretary of state brought the men into his library and kicked a leg over the arm of his leather chair. He lit a cigar and read the men his dispatch, which argued that by releasing the Confederates, the federal government was simply affirming the neutral rights that America had always sought. Seward declared that Mason and Slidell would be “cheerfully liberated.”91
As expected, the decision angered some Americans. Senator John Hale of New Hampshire complained that “surrender” would “reduce us to the position of a second-rate Power, and make us the vassal of Great Britain.” Most Northerners, however, seem to have been relieved. “We believe,” wrote a New York Tribune columnist on December 30, that “the administration is stronger with the people today than if Mason and Slidell had never been captured or their surrender had been refused.” Nobody seems to have paid much attention to the fine print. If they had, they might have realized that Seward’s justification was full of holes. The secretary of state had maintained that diplomats could be considered “contraband of war”—a questionable proposition at best. He also argued misleadingly that in the resolution of the affair Britian had somehow disavowed the practice of impressment, which historically had been the source of much ill will between Washington and London. Seward’s response, notes one historian of the crisis, amounted to “a monument to illogic.” Still, the document served its purpose. Lincoln and Seward had defused an explosive situation.92
Lincoln recognized that his decision had looked like weakness to some. Actually, however, it was a near-perfect illustration of the president’s central foreign-policy principle. The pursuit of America’s national interest, in this case, required conciliation. The United States needed British goodwill in order to survive the Civil War. Lincoln could not afford to open a second front, and any rupture of the Anglo-American relationship would make British recognition of the Confederacy that much more likely. Conveniently, the smart decision was also the just decision. Wilkes had violated international law and the world was on Britain’s side. “It was a pretty bitter pill to swallow,” Lincoln later recalled, “but I contented myself with believing that England’s triumph in the matter would be short-lived, and that after ending our war successfully we would be so powerful that we could call her to account for all the embarrassments she had inflicted upon us.”93
Lincoln explained his logic by telling one of his favorite stories. The president joked that he felt like “the sick man in Illinois who was told he probably hadn’t many days longer to live, and he ought to make his peace with any enemies he might have.” The man’s greatest foe was a man named Brown, Lincoln said. “So Brown was sent for, and when he came the sick man began to say, in a voice as meek as Moses’s, that he wanted to die at peace with all his fellow-creatures, and he hoped he and Brown could now shake hands and bury all their enmity.” Brown, as the president told the story, eventually broke down and reconciled with the sick man. The whole thing was “a regular love-feast of forgiveness,” Lincoln said. Still, as Brown was leaving the room, the sick man propped himself up on an elbow and called out after him: “But see here, Brown; if I should happen to get well, mind, that old grudge stands.” Lincoln spelled out the moral of his story. “I thought,” the president explained, “that if this nation should happen to get well we might want that old grudge against England to stand.”94
For now, though, Lincoln and his secretary of state recognized that the Union was still too sick to pick a fight with Europe. Seward is generally lauded by historians for his role in peaceably resolving the Trent affair. The secretary of state later maintained that the crisis had been a critical moment in the war—an episode “upon which all subsequent events hinged.” From the contemporary diaries of Lincoln’s cabinet secretaries, it appears that at times the secretary of state was virtually the only voice in favor of unconditional release. The president, however, also urged conciliation from the beginning, and worked to prepare public opinion for the envoys’ release. Lincoln’s role in the episode was “of decisive importance,” writes historian James Randall. The president’s contribution lay “in his restraint, his avoidance of any outward expression of truculence, his early softening of the State Department’s attitude toward Britain, his deference toward Seward and Sumner, his withholding of his own paper prepared for the occasion, his readiness to arbitrate, his golden silence in addressing Congress, his shrewdness in recognizing that war must be averted, and his clear perception that a point could be clinched for America’s true position at the same time that full satisfaction was given to a friendly country.” The president’s role was “characteristic of Lincoln,” Seward’s son Frederick later recalled. “Presidents and kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments. But fortunately for the Union, it had a president at this time who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart.”95
News of Lincoln’s decision arrived in London by telegraph late on the afternoon of January 8, 1862. American diplomats in the city could finally exhale. For days, anxiety in the legation had been “at fever heat,” one envoy recorded in his diary. The release of Mason and Slidell “lifted a load of lead from our hearts.” European diplomats “sprang to their feet as if electrified” upon hearing of the decision. The following day the details were announced at London theaters between acts, “and the audiences rose like one and cheered tremendously.” The telegraph beamed the bulletin from town to town as church bells pealed in celebration.96
Palmerston, who had been pumped full of drugs for his gout, was initially too medicated to grasp the news of Washington’s capitulation. Eventually, however, he recovered enough to crow about the British victory. “The peaceful settlement of the difference with the Federal Government,” he wrote Queen Victoria, “is indeed a happy event.” While a war with the Federal go
vernment would have been “most successful,” he told the queen, it also would have come at a heavy cost. Any conflict, even a victorious one, would have involved “much embarrassment to commerce” and “painful sacrifices of the lives and blood of brave men.” The Morning Post, Palmerston’s mouthpiece, lauded “the mingled firmness and courtesy” of British policy.97
Still, the whole episode irritated the British prime minister. Palmerston was still “wary of the Yankees,” even after Mason and Slidell had been handed over. He wrote one of his most scathing assessments of the American Civil War less than two weeks after the release of the Confederate envoys. If the United States were dismembered and Mexico became a monarchy, Palmerston argued, “I do not know any arrangement that would be more advantageous for us.” John Bright believed Palmerston was simply blustering to maintain public support. The prime minister’s reputation, he wrote to Lincoln’s man in Paris, John Bigelow, depended on the public belief that “he is plucky and instant in the defense of English honour.” Conflict, Bright insisted, would help keep Palmerston in power. “If foreign affairs are tranquil,” the British liberal wrote, the prime minister’s government would fall.98
The Bottom Is Out of the Tub
Lincoln, meanwhile, worried that his own government was teetering. At a New Year’s reception at the Executive Mansion, the president presented a genial face, joking and shaking hands. Still, Lincoln appeared “perceptibly older” than he had when he took office, one journalist observed. Ten days later the president complained to General Montgomery Meigs about the flood of new crises pouring into his office. Americans were growing “impatient” with the war’s progress, he explained. His top general had typhoid. “The bottom is out of the tub,” Lincoln wrote. “What shall I do?”99
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