Abraham Lincoln

by William Eleroy Curtis

"Accordingly, I am instructed by the President to inquire whether Her Majesty's government will hear the United States upon the matter in question. The President desires, among other things, to bring into view, and have considered, the existing rebellion in the United States; the position Great Britain has assumed, including Her Majesty's proclamation in relation thereto; the relation the persons whose seizure is the subject of complaint bore to the United States, and the object of their voyage at the time they were seized; the knowledge which the master of the 'Trent' had of their relation to the United States, and of the object of their voyage, at the time he received them on board for the voyage; the place of the seizure; and the precedents and respective positions assumed in analogous cases between Great Britain and the United States.

"Upon a submission containing the foregoing facts, with those set forth in the before-mentioned despatch to your lordship, together with all other facts which either party may deem material, I am instructed to say the government of the United States will, if agreed to by Her Majesty's government, go to such friendly arbitration as is usual among nations, and will abide the award."

This despatch was not sent; nor was it ever submitted to the Cabinet. Before the opportunity arrived the President was convinced of the danger of temporizing. Eight thousand troops were despatched from London to Canada, a British fleet was ordered to American waters, and the export of arms and ammunition from Great Britain was forbidden. The President's cool judgment and common sense also taught him that the position of our government was untenable, and, with his keen perceptions as a lawyer, he saw how the United States could honorably withdraw and at the same time use the incident to its own advantage and get the better of the controversy.

"We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of neutrals," he said. "We fought Great Britain for insisting by theory and practice on the right to do precisely what Captain Wilkes has done. If Great Britain shall now protest against the act and demand their release, we must give them up and apologize for the act as a violation of our own doctrines, and thus forever bind her over to keep the peace in relation to neutrals, and so acknowledge that she has been wrong for sixty years."

Mr. Seward prepared a long and remarkable presentation of the case of the United States which is considered one of the ablest of his many state papers. He admitted that Captain Wilkes had done wrong and had exceeded his instructions, but asserted that "this government has neither meditated, nor practised, nor approved any deliberate wrong in the transaction to which they have called its attention, and, on the contrary, that what has happened has been simply an inadvertency, consisting in the departure by the naval officer, free from any wrongful motive, from a rule uncertainly established, and probably by the several parties concerned either imperfectly understood or entirely unknown. For this error the British government has a right to expect the same reparation that we, as an independent state, should expect from Great Britain or any other friendly nation in a similar case.... If I decide this case in favor of my own government, I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse and forever abandon its essential policy. The country cannot afford the sacrifice. If I maintain those principles and adhere to that policy, I must surrender the case itself.... The four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort Warren, in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully liberated."

Thus, through Lincoln's penetration and judgment, a great international peril was not only averted, but Great Britain was forced to relinquish her own contentions and adopt the American doctrine respecting this class of neutral rights.

There were frequent matters of controversy between the British Foreign Office and the Department of State at Washington during the four years of war because of the systematic violation of the neutrality laws by English subjects, and they were aggravated by the unconcealed sympathy of the British people with the Confederate States. Our government was ably represented in London by Charles Francis Adams, in whom Lincoln had great confidence, and his voluminous instructions from time to time, although prepared by Secretary Seward, were always carefully revised by the President. Altogether, the diplomatic correspondence during that period, both in matters of controversy and particularly concerning offers of mediation in our affairs made by the European powers, shows a diplomatic penetration and skill which excite the admiration of students.

Among other perplexing questions with which he was compelled to deal was the invasion of Mexico and the attempt to establish an empire at the city of the Montezumas. The President took the most positive and determined ground in support of the Monroe doctrine—more advanced than had been attempted at that time. He expressed an unqualified disapproval of the French invasion; and, although he was not in a position to intervene with force, lost no opportunity of making known to the other powers of Europe, and through our minister in Paris to the Emperor of France himself, that the movement to erect a monarchy on American soil was repugnant to the United States. To strengthen his position he suggested that Governor Dennison, who was to be chairman of the Baltimore Convention in 1864, give a strong endorsement of the Monroe doctrine in his opening speech, and that the Convention adopt a resolution declaring that the people of the United States would not permit the overthrow of a republican government or the establishment of a monarchy upon the Western continent.

Early in 1865 Lincoln and Secretary Seward received three peace commissioners from the Confederacy—Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell,—who wanted the President to recognize the Southern Confederacy as a foreign government. Mr. Hunter urged this very strongly, declaring that the recognition of Jefferson Davis's official authority to make a treaty was an indispensable step to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament as a trustworthy precedent. When Mr. Hunter made this point, Lincoln looked up quickly and remarked,—

"Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted on such things and I do not profess to be; but it is my distinct recollection that, as a result of that correspondence, Charles lost his head."