CHAP. II. ary explained that he received them only as "distinguished gentlemen." They took passage on board the British mail steamer Trent for St. Thomas, intending there to take the regular packet to England. 1861. Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the United States war steamer San Jacinto, just returned from an African cruise, heard of the circumstance, and, going to Havana, fully informed himself of the details of their intended route. The Trent, he learned, was to leave Havana on the 7th of November. That day found him stationed in the old Bahama channel, near the northern coast of Cuba, where he had reason to believe she would pass. At about noon of the 8th the lookout announced the approach of the Trent, and when she was sufficiently near, the San Jacinto fired a round-shot across her course, and displayed the American colors. The British steamer did not seem disposed to accept the warning and failed to slacken her speed, whereupon Captain Wilkes ordered a shell to be fired across her bows, which at once brought her to. Lieutenant D. M. Fairfax, with two officers and a guard of marines, left the San Jacinto and rowed to the mail steamer; the lieutenant mounted to the deck alone, leaving his officers and men in the boat. He was shown to the quarter-deck, where he met Captain Moir of the Trent, and, informing him who he was, asked to see his passenger-list. Captain Moir declined to show it. Lieutenant Fairfax then told him of his information that the rebel commissioners were on board and that he must satisfy himself on that point before allowing the steamer to proceed. The envoys and their secretaries came up, and, hearing their names mentioned, asked if they were wanted. Lieutenant Fairfax then made known in full the purport of his orders and the object of his visit, to seize the Confederate officials. The altercation called a considerable number of passengers around the group. All of them manifested open secession sympathy, and some indulged in abusive language so loud and demonstrative that the lieutenant's two officers, and six or eight armed men from the boat, without being called, mounted to the lieutenant's assistance. In these unfriendly demonstrations the mail agent of the Trent, one Commander Williams, a retired British naval officer, made himself especially conspicuous with the declaration that he was the "Queen's representative," and with various threats of the consequences of the affair. The captain of the Trent firmly but quietly refused all compliance or search, and the envoys and their secretaries protested against arrest, whereupon Lieutenant Fairfax sent one of his officers back to the San Jacinto for additional force. In perhaps half an hour the second boat returned from the San Jacinto with some twentyfour additional men. Lieutenant Fairfax now proceeded to execute his orders without actual violence, and with all the politeness possible under the circumstances. Mason and Slidell, and their secretaries, foreseeing the inevitable, had retired to their state-rooms to pack their luggage; thither it was necessary to follow them, and there the presence of the families of Slidell and Eustis created some slight confusion, and a few armed marines entered the cabin, but were sent back. СНАР. ІІ. CHAP. II. The final act of capture and removal was then carried out with formal stage solemnity.1 Report, Secretary of the Navy, Dec. 2, 1861. 1861. Captain Wilkes's first instruction to Lieutenant Fairfax was to seize the Trent as a prize, but, as he afterwards explained: "I forebore to seize her, however, in consequence of my being so reduced in officers and crew, and the derangement it would cause innocent persons, there being a large number of passengers, who would have been put to great loss and inconvenience as well as disappointment from the interruption it would have caused them in not being able to join the steamer from St. Thomas to Europe." The Trent was allowed to proceed on her voyage, while the San Jacinto steamed away for Boston, where she arrived on the 24th of November, and transferred her prisoners to Fort Warren. The whole country rang with exultation over the exploit. The feeling was greatly heightened by 1" When the marines and some armed men had been formed," reports Lieutenant Fairfax, "just outside of the main deck cabin, where these four gentlemen had gone to pack up their baggage, I renewed my efforts to induce them to accompany me on board, they still refusing to accompany me unless force was applied. I called in to my assistance four or five officers, and first taking hold of Mr. Mason's shoulder, with another officer on the opposite side, I went as far as the gangway of the steamer, and delivered him over to Lieutenant Greer, to be placed in the boat. I then returned for Mr. Slidell, who insisted that I must apply considerable force to get him to go with me. Calling in at last three officers, he also was taken in charge and handed over to Mr. Greer. Mr. McFarland and Mr. Eustis, after protesting, went quietly into the boat." "There was a great deal of excitement on board at this time," says another report, "and the officers and passengers of the steamer were addressing us by numerous opprobrious epithets, such as calling us pirates, villains, traitors, etc." The families of Slidell and Eustis had meanwhile been tendered the use of the cabin of the San Jacinto, if they preferred to accompany the prisoners; but they declined, and proceeded in the Trent. [Report, Secretary of the Navy, Dec. 2, 1861.] Welles, in "The Galaxy," May, 1873, p. 649. the general public indignation at the unfriendli- CHAP. II. ness England had so far manifested to the Union cause; but perhaps more especially because the two persons seized had been among the most bitter and active of the secession conspirators. The public press lauded Captain Wilkes, Boston gave him a banquet, and the Secretary of the Navy wrote him a letter of emphatic approval. He congratulated him "on the great public service" he had rendered in the capture, and expressed only the reservation that his conduct in omitting to capture the vessel must not be allowed to constitute a precedent. When Congress met on the 2d of December following, the House of Representatives immediately passed a resolution, without a dissenting voice, thanking Captain Wilkes for his "brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct"; while by other resolutions the President was requested to order the prisoners into close confinement, in retaliation for similar treatment by the rebels of certain prisoners of war. The strong current of public feeling approved the act without qualification, and manifested an instant and united readiness to defend it. President Lincoln's usual cool judgment at once recognized the dangers and complications that might grow out of the occurrence. A well-known writer has recorded what he said in a confidential interview on the day the news was received: “I fear the traitors will prove to be white elephants. 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 1861. Lossing, "Civil War CHAP. II. 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, 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." 1 in the United States." Vol. II., pp. 156, 157. The Cabinet generally coincided in expressing gratification and approval. The international questions involved came upon them so suddenly that they were not ready with decided opinions concerning the law and policy of the case; besides, the true course obviously was to await the action of Great Britain. The passengers on board the Trent, as well as the reports of her officers, carried the news of the capture directly to England, where the incident raised a storm of public opinion even more violent than that in the United States, but very naturally on the opposite side. The Government of England relied for its information mainly upon the official report of the mail agent, Commander Williams, who had made himself so officious as the "Queen's representative," and who, true to the secession sympathies manifested by him on shipboard, gave his report a strong coloring of the same character. 1 Mr. Welles, Secretary of the Navy, corroborated the statement in "The Galaxy" for May, 1873, p. 647: "The President, with whom I had an interview immediately on receiving information that the emissaries were captured and on board the San Jacinto, before consultation with any other member of the Cabinet discussed with me some of the difficult points presented. His chief anxiety-for his attention had never been turned to admiralty law and naval captureswas as to the disposition of the prisoners, who, to use his own expression, would be elephants on our hands that we could not easily dispose of. Public indignation was so overwhelming against the chief conspirators that he feared it would be difficult to prevent severe and exemplary punishment, which he always deprecated." |