CHAPTER 24
I have never, under any circumstances, presumed to offer any advice as to men or measures to those who have succeeded me in the administration of the government.
—MILLARD FILLMORE
Buchanan ~ Lincoln ~ Fillmore
Richard Cobden, a prominent British manufacturer and member of Parliament, had written James Buchanan about the strain between the United States and his country. “The subject is so distressing to my feelings that I avoid as much as possible all correspondence with my American friends,” he explained.
Cobden believed the war should be arbitrated, and that “The subject of the blockade is becoming more and more serious . . . I feel very anxious that nothing should arise to put in jeopardy the relations between England and your country.” His nervousness would not be without reason.
The USS San Jacinto had passed an uneventful autumn in search of Confederate privateers. At Cienfuegos, Cuba, it was learned that Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell had broken the blockade and arrived in Havana, bound for Europe, where they would seek recognition for the Confederacy. The officers went to shore in street clothes to gather intelligence. Mason and Slidell were still in the city, scheduled to depart aboard the Trent, a British steamer, to the island of St. Thomas and from there to Southampton, England. Shortly before noon on November 8, the smoke of the Trent appeared in view. Captain Charles Wilkes called Lieutenant Donald Fairfax into his cabin, giving him orders to prepare the San Jacinto for a confrontation; to board the Trent, and ifMason and Slidell were to be found, to arrest them. Wilkes and Slidell had known each other as boys in New York, and had even fought over a girl. Their lives were about to intersect once again.
The San Jacinto fired a shot over the Trent’s bow, and when the plain meaning was not understood, another. Passengers could be seen running around on her deck.
“What do you mean by stopping my ship?” shouted the captain of the Trent.
“We are going to send a boat on board of you,” said Lieutenant Breese of the San Jacinto, “Lay to.”
Crossing the water in a small cutter ship, Fairfax boarded the Trent by himself. Captain Moir of the Trent demanded to see Fairfax’s own captain, saying, “How dare you come on board of my ship? What right have you here? This is an outrage the flag there will make you pay for,” he said, pointing to the St. George’s Cross.
Fairfax courteously bowed and explained his mission.
Moir likened him to a “damned impertinent, outrageous puppy,” telling him to return to his ship. “I deny your right of search. D’ye understand that?”, upon which the captain was cheered by forty or fifty passengers now surrounding them. Fairfax declined, summoning to this ship his thirty men—including ten marines—from the cutters below.
“Do you wish to see me?” Slidell said, stepping forward. “To see me?” Mason asked.
Fairfax told them that they would join him aboard the San Jacinto “peaceably if you want to, but by force if necessary,” with the result the same.
The Confederate diplomats returned to their staterooms with Fairfax in pursuit. Slidell’s daughter stood in the doorway, pledging “I swear to heaven you shall not go into this cabin to my father.”
Fairfax held his ground and watched Slidell try to leave his cabin through a window. Mason came outside and Fairfax ordered his men to seize him. When Slidell repeated his refusal, Fairfax grabbed him by the collar and with two others walked him down the gangplank. One of their clerks did not come as easily, punching one of his captors. On November 24, the San Jacinto arrived at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, with prisoners aboard.
When the news reached the telegraph office, a meeting between Lincoln, the cabinet, and some members of the Senate was held immediately. The consensus was that Wilkes had acted appropriately. Lincoln felt differently, aware of the potential unwanted consequences.
Buchanan was fearful of British public opinion. “We shall probably receive a terrible broadside from the English journals,” he wrote. But he argued that America was in the right, writing to Cobden, “A neutral nation is the common friend of both belligerents, and has no right to aid the one to the injury of the other.” Therefore, “a neutral vessel has no right to . . . transport his troops or his despatches.”
“I fear the traitors will prove to be white elephants,” Lincoln said. “We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of neutrals. 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, apologize for the act as a violation of our doctrines.”
Britain’s entry to the war would have brought about its conclusion. Their navy, the world’s most renowned, could have smashed the Union blockade. British India was the principal supplier of saltpeter, necessary for making gunpowder; twenty-three hundred tons on five ships waited in Britain as a consequence of the Trent affair. Nicolay and Hay remembered, “There seemed little possibility that a war could be avoided.” Eight thousand British soldiers were sent to Canada. Additional ships were sent to American waters. Seven months after the firing on Fort Sumter, four months after Bull Run, the South by itself was proving more than a match for the Union—aided by a global military power and the war was as good as lost.
Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister, penned a formal response to the United States, a draft of which he submitted to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Albert, in his last political memorandum, softened its wording, giving the administration possible outs, asking whether Wilkes was acting under orders, or whether he misunderstood those orders, and making clear that her Majesty was unwilling to believe that the United States would purposely insult the country.
“I’m not getting much sleep out of that exploit of Wilkes’s,” Lincoln told Attorney General Bates, “and I suppose we must look up the law of the case. I am not much of a prize [admiralty] lawyer, but it seems to me pretty clear that if Wilkes saw fit to make that capture on the high seas he had no right to turn his quarter-deck into a prize court.”
Bates thought the more he saw of Lincoln, the more “he was impressed with the clearness and vigor of his intellect and the breadth and sagacity of his views,” adding, “He is beyond question the master-mind of the cabinet.”
Finessing this particular task would take all of Lincoln’s skill. Keeping the prisoners would mean war with Britain. But on December 2,when the 37th Congress met, they unanimously passed a resolution commending Wilkes for “his brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct,” and urging Lincoln to put the two would-be emissaries in solitary confinement.
Millard Fillmore, mindful of the strictures of former presidents, could not resist penning Lincoln a six-page letter. “I have never,” he began, “under any circumstances, presumed to offer any advice as to men or measures to those who have succeeded me in the administration of the government. And I beg of you to consider the few candid suggestions which I am now about to make.” Fillmore appreciated the difficulties that Lincoln must be feeling in handling this “unholy rebellion.” He had “heard the threatening thunder, and viewed the gathering storm at a distance in 1850; and while I approve most cordially of the firm stand which you have taken in support of the Constitution as it is, against insane abolitionism on one side and rebellious secessionism on the other, and hope and trust that you will remain firm; yet it was not to speak of this that I took up my pen, but of a new danger which threatens more immediately our Northern frontier, but in its consequences, most fatally, the whole country.” In a war with England, Fillmore argued, “the last hope of restoring the Union will vanish.” Fillmore had heard that Britain had demanded the release of the prisoners and an apology. He hoped it was not true, but if it were, “one of two things must happen; the government must submit, or engage in a war to settle a point of international law.”
Fillmore argued for a “firm but conciliatory” response, acknowledging that the two nations disagreed on the law—“this is a purely legal question”—and that no insult was intended to Great Britain. He suggested that Lincoln offer to submit to binding arbitration by one of the European monarchs. Fillmore believed that England “can not refuse so fair a proposition. But if she does, and insists on an unconditional compliance with her demand or war, all Christendom will then hold her responsible for the consequences.” No response from Lincoln has ever been found, but there can be little doubt that he knew of the letter. The two presidents were of similar minds. Weeks earlier, Lincoln had responded favorably to Fillmore’s request to grant his nephew a commission in the army.
On December 23, the British minister presented Secretary of State Seward with a formal demand for the release of the prisoners and an apology. Privately, he told Seward that he was instructed to close the embassy and withdraw from Washington. With time running out, the cabinet met for four hours on Christmas. Charles Sumner, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was included. “All of us were impressed with the magnitude of the subject,” Bates recalled, “and believed that upon our decision depended the dearest interest, probably the existence, of the nation.” The next day the cabinet unanimously resolved to release the prisoners and accept the fallout in public opinion.
Meanwhile, Buchanan recorded “a very sober, quiet and contented Christmas.” Just a year earlier he had been president of the United States, five days removed from South Carolina’s secession. Now his day consisted of morning church services and a pleasant dinner with his housekeeper.
Buchanan believed that “under all the circumstances, the administration acted wisely in surrendering Mason and Slidell.” But he regretted Seward’s blustery letter of release. “When we determined to swallow the bitter pill, which I think was right,” Buchanan wrote, “we ought to have done it gracefully and without pettifogging.”
If war broke out with Britain, the city of Buffalo, on the Canadian border, would instantly find itself on the front lines, threatened with the kind of destruction it had met in the War of 1812. On January 2, 1862, 350 of the leading citizens of Buffalo received a printed circular from Millard Fillmore. “There will be a meeting of the citizens of Buffalo, at the old Court House, on Friday evening, January 3d, at 8 o’clock, to take into consideration the subject of the defense of our city and frontier.” At this first meeting, Fillmore was elected permanent chair of the Buffalo Committee of Public Defense, promising to do everything possible and necessary to defend the city against attack.