Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

On the 26th of December Mr. Seward transmitted to Lord Lyons the reply of the United States to the demand of the British Government. In forwarding it to his Government Lord Lyons said: "Before transmitting to me the note of which a copy enclosed in my immediately preceding dispatch of to-day's date, Mr. Seward sent for me to the State Department, and said with some emotion that he thought that it was due to the great kindness and consideration which I had manifested throughout in dealing with the affair of the Trent, that he should tell me with his own lips that he had been able to effect a satisfactory settlement of it. He had now however been authorized to address to me a note which would be satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government. In answer to inquiries from me Mr. Seward said that of course he understood Her Majesty's Government to leave it open to the Government of Washington to present the case in the form which would be most acceptable to the American people, but that the note was intended to be and was a compliance with the terms proposed by Her Majesty's Government. He would add that the friendly spirit and discretion which I had manifested in the whole matter from the day on which the intelligence of the seizure reached Washington up to the present moment had more than any thing else contributed to the satisfactory settlement of the question."

In his reply Mr. Seward took the ground that we had the right to detain the British vessel and to search for contraband persons and dispatches, and moreover that the persons named and their dispatches were contraband. But he found good reason for surrendering the Confederate envoys in the fact that Captain Wilkes had neglected to bring the Trent into a Prize Court and to submit the whole transaction to Judicial examination. Mr. Seward certainly strained the argument of Mr. Madison as Secretary of State in 1804 to a most extraordinary degree when he apparently made it cover the ground that we would quietly have submitted to British right of search if the "Floating Judgment-seat" could have been substituted by a British Prize Court. The seizure of the Trent would not have been made more acceptable to the English Government by transferring her to the jurisdiction of an American Prize-Court, unless indeed that Court should have decided, as it most probably would have decided, that the seizure was illegal. Measuring the English demand not by the peremptory words of Lord John Russell but by the kindly phrase in which Lord Lyons in a personal interview verbally communicated them, Mr. Seward felt justified in saying that "the claim of the British Government is not made in a discourteous manner." Mr. Seward did not know that at the very moment he was writing these conciliatory words, British troops were on their way to the Dominion of Canada to menace the United States, and that British cannon were shotted for our destruction.

Lord John Russell, however much he might differ from Mr. Seward's argument, found ample satisfaction to the British Government in his conclusion. He said in reply: "Her Majesty's Government having carefully taken into their consideration the liberation of the prisoners, the delivery of them into your hands, and the explanations to which I have just referred, have arrived at the conclusion that they constitute the reparation which Her Majesty and the British nation had a right to expect." And thus, by the delivery of the prisoners in the form and at the place least calculated to excite or wound the susceptibilities of the American people, this dangerous question was settled. It is only to be regretted that the spirit and discretion exhibited by the eminent diplomatist who represented England here with such wisdom and good temper, had not been adopted at an earlier date and more steadily maintained by the British Government. It would have prevented much angry controversy, much bitter feeling; it would have averted events and consequences which still shadow with distrust a national friendship that ought to be cordial and constant.

ENGLAND, FRANCE, PRUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA.

The painful event impressed upon the Government of the United States a profound sense of its isolation from the sympathy of Europe. The principle of maritime law, which was so promptly and rigorously applied, was one for which the United States had contended in its weakness against the usages of the world and against the arms of Great Britain. There was apparent now an eager resolution to enforce it, when that enforcement was sure to embarrass us and to provoke a spirit of derisive triumph in our foes. It was clear that no effort would be spared to restrict our belligerent rights within the narrowest possible limits. Not content with leaving us to settle this question with England, France and Prussia and Austria hastened to inform us in language professedly friendly, that England would be supported in her demand for reparation, cost what it might to us in prestige, and in power to deal with the Rebellion at home. At this time there was but one among the great nations of the world which adhered to an active and avowed friendship for us. "We desire above all things the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation," was the kindly and always to be remembered greeting that came to us from the Emperor of Russia.

The profound ability exhibited by Mr. Seward as Secretary of State has long been acknowledged and emphasized by the admiration and gratitude of the country. In the Trent affair he acted under a pressure of circumstances more harassing and perplexing than had ever tested the skill of American diplomacy. It is with no disposition to detract from the great service rendered by him that a dissent is expressed from the ground upon which he placed the surrender of Mason and Slidell. It is not believed that the doctrine announced by Mr. Seward can be maintained on sound principles of International Law, while it is certainly in conflict with the practice which the United States had sought to establish from the foundation of the Government. The restoration of the envoys on any such apparently insufficient basis did not avoid the mortification of the surrender; it only deprived us of the fuller credit and advantage which we might have secured from the act. It is to be regretted that we did not place the restoration of the prisoners upon franker and truer ground, viz., that their seizure was in violation of the principles which we had steadily and resolutely maintained—principles which we would not abandon either for a temporary advantage or to save the wounding of our National pride.

The luminous speech of Mr. Sumner, when the papers in the Trent case were submitted to Congress, stated the ground for which the United States had always contended with admirable precision. We could not have refused to surrender Mason and Slidell without trampling upon our own principles and disregarding the many precedents we had sought to establish. But it must not be forgotten that the sword of precedent cut both ways. It was as absolutely against the peremptory demand of England for the surrender of the prisoners as it was against the United States for the seizure of them. Whatever wrong was inflicted on the British Flag by the action of Captain Wilkes, had been time and again inflicted on the American flag by officers of the English Navy,—without cause, without redress, without apology. Hundreds and thousands of American citizens had in time of peace been taken by British cruisers from the decks of American vessels and violently impressed into the naval service of that country.

Lord Castlereagh practically confessed in Parliament that this offense against the liberty of American citizens had been repeated thirty-five hundred times. According to the records of our own department of State as Mr. Sumner alleges "the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war had been made a floating judgment-seat six thousand times and upwards, and each time some citizen or other person was taken from the protection of our national flag without any form of trial whatever." So insolent and oppressive had British aggression become before the war of 1812, that Mr. Jefferson in his somewhat celebrated letter to Madame de Staël-Holstein of May 24, 1813, said, "No American could safely cross the ocean or venture to pass by sea from one to another of our own ports. It is not long since they impressed at sea two nephews of General Washington returning from Europe, and put them, as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war."

After the war of 1812 these unendurable insults to our flag were not repeated by Great Britain, but her Government steadily refused to make any formal renunciation of her right to repeat them, so that our immunity from like insults did not rest upon any better foundation than that which might be dictated by considerations of interest and prudence on the part of the offending Power. The wrong which Captain Wilkes committed against the British flag was surely not so great as if he had seized the persons of British subjects—subjects, if you please, who were of kindred blood to one who stands as high in the affection of the British people as Washington stands in the affection of the American people,—if indeed there be such a one in English tradition.

The offense of Captain Wilkes was surely far below that in the essential quality of outrage. He had not touched the hair of a British subject's head. He had only removed from the hospitality and shelter of a British ship four men who were bent on an errand of destruction to the American Union. His act cannot be justified by the canons of International Law as our own Government has interpreted and enforced them. But in view of the past and of the long series of graver outrages with which Great Britain had so wantonly insulted the American flag, she might have refrained from invoking the judgment of the civilized world against us, and especially might she have refrained from making in the hour of our sore trial and our deep distress, a demand which no British Minister would address to this Government in the day of its strength and its power.