86

THE TRENT AFFAIR.

[1861.

carcerated in Fort Warren. This action, for which Wilkes received the thanks of Congress, was denounced as an outrage on British neutrality. The entire British public bristled up as one lion, and their Government demanded an apology and the liberation of the prisoners. The American public was unable to see any way out of the dilemma, and was considering whether it would choose humiliation or a foreign war, when our Secretary of State, William H. Seward, solved the problem in a masterly manner. In his formal reply he discussed the whole question with great ability, showing that such detention of a vessel was justified by the laws of war, and there were innumerable British precedents for it; that Captain Wilkes conducted the search in a proper manner; that the commissioners were contraband of war; and that the commander of the “Trent" knew they were contraband of war when he took them as passengers.

Wilkes had failed to complete the transaction in a legal manner by bringing the "Trent" into port for adjudication in a prize court, it must be repudiated. In other words, by his consideration for the interests and convenience of innocent persons, he had lost his prize. In summing up, Mr. Seward said: "If I declare this case in favor of my own Government, I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse and forever abandon its most essential policy. We are asked to do to the British nation just what we have always insisted all nations ought to do to us." The commissioners were released, and sailed for England

[1862.

HOSTILITY IN ENGLAND.

87

in January; but the purpose of their mission had been practically thwarted. This was a remarkable instance of eating one's cake and keeping it at the same time.

But though danger of intervention was thus for the time averted, and the relations between the British Government and our own remained nominally friendly, so far as moral influence and bitterness of feeling could go the Republic had no more determined enemies in the cotton States than in the heart of England. The aristocratic classes rejoiced at anything that threatened to destroy democratic government or make its stability doubtful. They confidently expected to see our country fall into a state of anarchy like that experienced so often by the Spanish-American republics, and were willing to do everything they safely could to bring it about. The foremost English journals had been predicting such a disaster ever since the beginning of the century, had announced it as in progress when a British force burned Washington in 1814, and now were surer of it than ever. Almost our only friends of the London press were the daily "News" and weekly "Spectator." The commercial classes, in a country that had fought so many commercial wars, were of course delighted at the crippling of a commercial rival whom they had so long hated and feared, no matter what it might cost in the shedding of blood and the destruction of social order. Among the working classes, though they suffered heavily when the supply of cotton was diminished, we had many

88

ATTITUDE OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.

[1861.

firm and devoted friends, who saw and felt, however imperfectly, that the cause of free labor was their own cause, no matter on which side of the Atlantic the battle-field might lie.

A

To those who had for years endured the taunts of Englishmen who pointed to American slavery and its tolerance in the American Constitution, while they boasted that no slave could breathe on British soil, it was a strange sight, when our country was at war over the question, to see almost everything that had power and influence in England arrayed on the side of the slaveholders. few famous Englishmen-notably John Bright and Goldwin Smith-were true to the cause of liberty, and did much to instruct the laboring classes as to the real nature and significance of the conflict. Henry Ward Beecher, then at the height of his powers, went to England and addressed large audiences, enlightening them as to the real nature of American affairs, concerning which most of them were grossly ignorant, and produced an effect that was probably never surpassed by any orator. The Canadians, with the usual narrowness of provincials, blind to their own ultimate interests, were in the main more bitterly hostile than the mother country.

Louis Napoleon, then the despotic ruler of France, was unfriendly to the United States, and did his utmost to persuade the English Government to unite with him in a scheme of intervention that would probably have secured the division of the country. How far his plans went beyond that

1864.]

* FRIENDSHIP OF RUSSIA.

89

result, can only be conjectured; but while the war was still in progress (1864) he threw a French force into Mexico and established there an ephemeral empire with an Austrian Archduke at its head. That the possession of Mexico alone was not his object, is suggested by the fact that when the rebellion was subdued and the secession cause extinct, he withdrew his troops from Mexico and left the Archduke to the fate of other filibusters.

The Russian Government was friendly to the United States throughout the struggle. The Imperial manifesto for the abolition of serfdom in Russia was issued on March 3, 1861, the day before President Lincoln was inaugurated, and this perhaps created a special bond of sympathy.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST UNION VICTORIES.

WHEN the war began, the greater part of the small navy of the United States was in distant watersoff the coast of Africa, in the Mediterranean, on the Asiatic station-and for some of the ships to receive the news and return, many months were required. Twelve vessels were at home-four in Northern and eight in Southern ports. The navy, like the army, lost many Southern officers by resignation or dismissal. About three hundred who had been educated for its service went over to the Confederacy; but none of them took with them the vessels they had commanded. The Government bought all sorts of merchant craft, mounting guns on some and fitting up others as transports, and had gunboats built on ninety-day contracts. It was a most miscellaneous fleet, whose principal strength consisted in the weakness of its adversary. The first purpose was to complete the blockade of Southern ports. Throughout the war this was never made so perfect that no vessels could pass through; but it was gradually rendered more and more effective, till running it became exceedingly dangerous. Large numbers of blockade-runners were captured or driven ashore and wrecked. The profit on a single cargo that passed either way in