TRENT

through his memorandum as a whole, and it is CHAP. II. evident that both the Queen and himself, gratefully remembering the welcome America had lately accorded the Prince of Wales, shrank from the prospect of an angry war. In this the Queen unconsciously responded to the impulse of amity and good-will which had induced the President to modify so materially his foreign secretary's dispatch of the 21st of May, the unpremeditated thought of the ruler, in each case, being at once wiser and more humane than the first intention of the diplomatists. It was from the intention rather than the words of the Prince that the Queen's ministers took their cue and modified the phraseology into more temperate shape. Earl Russell wrote:

Her Majesty's Government, 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 that, if he conceived himself to be so authorized, he greatly misunderstood the instructions he had received. For the Government of the United States must be fully aware that the British Government could not allow such an affront to the national honor to pass without full reparation, and her Majesty's Government are unwilling to believe that it could be the deliberate intention of the Government of the United States unnecessarily to force into discussion between the two Governments a question of so grave a character, and with regard to which the whole British nation would be sure to entertain such unanimity of feeling. Her Majes ty's Government, therefore, trust that when this matter shall have been brought under the consideration of the Government of the United States, that Government will of its own accord offer to the British Government such redress as alone would satisfy the British nation, namely,

1861.

CHAP. II.

Earl Rus

sell to Lord

the liberation of the four gentlemen and their delivery to your Lordship, in order that they may again be placed under British protection, and a suitable apology for the Lyons, Nov. aggression which has been committed. Should these terms not be offered by Mr. Seward, you will propose them to him.

30, 1861.

British

"Blue Book."

In the private note accompanying this formal dispatch further instruction was given, that if the demand were not substantially complied with in seven days, Lord Lyons should break off diplomatic relations and return with his whole legation to London. Yet at the last moment Lord Russell himself seems to have become impressed with the browbeating precipitancy of the whole proceeding, for he added another private note, better calculated than even the Queen's modification to soften the disagreeable announcement to the American Government. He wrote to Lord Lyons:

My wish would be that at your first interview with Mr. Seward you should not take my dispatch with you, but should prepare him for it and ask him to settle it with the President and the Cabinet what course they will propose. The next time you should bring my dispatch and read it to him fully. If he asks what will be the consequence of his refusing compliance, I think you should Inclosure say that you wish to leave him and the President quite free to take their own course, and that you desire to abstain from anything like menace.

in No. 49, British "Blue Book."

This last diplomatic touch reveals that the Ministry, like the Queen, shrank from war, but that it desired to reap all the advantages of a public menace, even while privately disclaiming one. The British demand reached Washington on the 19th of December. It happened, fortunately, that Lord Lyons and Mr. Seward were on excellent terms of

personal friendship, and the British envoy was CHAP. II. therefore able to present the affair with all the delicacy which had been suggested by Lord Russell. The Government at Washington had carefully abstained from any action other than that already mentioned. Lord Lyons wrote:

Mr. Seward received my communication seriously and with dignity, but without any manifestation of dissatisfaction. Some further conversation ensued in consequence of questions put by him with a view to ascertain the exact character of the dispatch. At the conclusion he asked me to give him to-morrow to consider the question and to communicate with the President.

Another dispatch from Lord Lyons shows that Mr. Seward asked a further delay, and that Lord Russell's communication was not formally read to him till Monday, the 23d of December. If we may credit the statement of Secretary Welles, Mr. Seward had not expected so serious a view of the affair by the British Government; and his own language implies as much when, in a private letter some months afterward, he mentions Lord Lyons's communication as "our first knowledge that the British Government proposed to make it a question of offense or insult, and so of war," adding: "If I had been as tame as you think would have been wise in my treatment of affairs with that country, I should have no standing in my own." But while Mr. Seward, like most other Americans, was doubtless elated by the first news that the rebel envoys were captured, he readily discerned that the incident was one of great diplomatic gravity and likely to be fruitful of prolonged diplomatic contention. Evidently in this spirit, and

Lyons to Dec. 19, 1861.

Russell,

Ibid., Dec. 23, 1861. British

"Blue

Book."

Seward to

Weed, Mar.

7,1862. "The Galaxy,"

Aug., 1870.

1861.

partment

MS.

CHAP. II. for the purpose of reserving to the United States every advantage in the serious discussion which was unavoidable, he prudently wrote in a confidential dispatch to Mr. Adams, on November 27: "I forbear from speaking of the capture of Messrs. Mason and Slidell. The act was done by Commodore Wilkes without instructions, and even without the knowledge of the Government. Lord Lyons has judiciously refrained from all communication with me on the subject, and I thought it equally State De- wise to reserve ourselves until we hear what the BritArchives. ish Government may have to say on the subject.” Of the confidential first interviews between the Secretary of State and the President on this important topic there is no record. From what remains we may easily infer that the President clearly saw the inevitable necessities surrounding the question, and was anxiously searching some method of securing for the United States whatever of indirect advantage might accrue from compliance with the British demand, and of making that compliance as palatable as might be to American public opinion. In this spirit we may presume he wrote the following experimental draft of a dispatch, preserved in his autograph manuscript. Its chief proposal is to arbitrate the difficulty, or in the alternative seriously to examine the question in all its aspects, and out of them to formulate a binding rule for both nations to govern similar cases. It was an honest and practical suggestion to turn an accidental quarrel into a great and durable transaction for the betterment of international law.

The dispatch of her Majesty's Secretary for Foreign Affairs, dated the 30th of November, 1861, and of which