THE SURRENDER OF MASON AND SLIDELL.
Mr. Seward’s answer conceding the British demand was very gratifying to
Lord Lyons. On December 27 he acknowledged its receipt and said that
he would immediately send a copy of this “important communication”
to Earl Russell, and that he would at once confer with Mr. Seward
concerning the necessary arrangements for the transfer of the “four
gentlemen” again into British protection. It thus appears that, without
waiting to hear from London, his lordship at once accepted the answer
of the Federal government as a final and satisfactory solution of the
difficulty. Three days after answering Mr. Seward’s letter, Lord Lyons
addressed a note to Commander Hewett, of the English sloop-of-war
Rinaldo, directing him to proceed at once with his vessel to
Provincetown, a small seaport in Massachusetts, about forty miles from
Boston, and receive the released prisoners at that place. His lordship
added at the same time: “It is hardly necessary that I should remind
you that these gentlemen have no official character. It will be right
for you to receive them with all courtesy and respect as gentlemen of
distinction, but it would be improper to pay them any of those honors
which are paid to official persons.” The transfer was directed to
be made “unostentatiously.” Having been conveyed from Fort Warren to
Provincetown in the tug-boat Starlight, the prisoners and their luggage
were put on board the Rinaldo on the evening of January 1, 1862. Their
“only wish,” they said, “was to proceed to Europe.” They were conveyed
without delay to the Danish port of St. Thomas, the place to which
they were proceeding when taken from the Trent by Captain Wilkes.
At St. Thomas they embarked for Europe and reached their respective
destinations without further mishap. The capture and removal of the
envoys to the United States caused a delay of about seventy days in
their journey.
After the surrender had been made and the Confederate emissaries taken
away, the prevalent tone throughout the North still upheld the act of
Captain Wilkes. Temporary expediency was assigned as the only reason
for giving up the men. The validity of the British claim was denied
in many public utterances, in most of which care was taken to reserve
the right of contesting the matter at a future time when the United
States would be better able to do this. The outcome of the whole matter
was looked upon by many public men as a national humiliation. In many
instances there were expressed feelings of the bitterest indignation
toward England and a purpose announced of avenging this insult so
wantonly offered the United States in her hour of deepest distress.
On the afternoon of January 7 the speaker of the house of
representatives laid before that body copies of the correspondence
which had taken place between the secretary of state and the British
government relative to the Trent case. An extended debate followed in
which there was a free expression of opinion concerning the British
demand and the subsequent surrender of the commissioners.
Mr. Vallandigham, of Ohio, thought a mistake had been made in giving up
the men. He said that “for the first time has the American eagle been
made to cower before the British lion.
“Sir, a venal or fettered and terror-stricken press, or servile and
sycophantic politicians in this house, or out of it, may applaud the
act; and may fawn and flatter and lick the hand which has smitten down
our honor into the dust; but the people, now or hereafter, will demand
a terrible reckoning for this most unmanly surrender.”[1]
Mr. Thomas, of Massachusetts, read a carefully prepared speech from
manuscript. Some extracts from it are as follows:
“Complaint of the government would be useless if not groundless. It
was too much to ask of it to take another war on its hands. Possibly
the elaborate and ingenious argument of the secretary might have been
spared. The matter was in a nut-shell; the answer in a word. Take them.
There are duties lying nearer us. We can wait.
“But we are not called upon, Mr. Speaker, to say that the demand was
manly or just. It was unmanly and unjust. It was a demand which, in
view of her history, of the rights she had always claimed and used
as a belligerent power, of the principles which her greatest of
jurists--Lord Stowell--had imbedded in the law of nations, England was
fairly estopped to make.”
Continuing his discussion Mr. Thomas said that England had “done to us
a great wrong in availing herself of our moment of weakness to make
a demand which, accompanied as it was by the pomp and circumstance
of war, was insolent in spirit and thoroughly unjust. It was indeed
courteous in language, but it was the courtesy of Joab to Amasa as he
smote him in the fifth rib: ‘Art thou in health, my brother?’ That
message of Lord Russell to Lord Lyons which could cross the Atlantic
had not projectile force enough to have passed from Dover to Calais.”
In conclusion he said of the course of England: “But the loss will
ultimately be hers. She is treasuring up to herself wrath against the
day of wrath. She has excited in the hearts of this people a deep and
bitter sense of wrong, of injury inflicted at a moment when we could
not respond. It is night with us now, but through the watches of the
night, even, we shall be girding ourselves to strike the blow of
righteous retribution.”
Mr. Wright, of Pennsylvania, said: “I justify the act as I understand
it is justified by the country. Public meetings were everywhere held;
Captain Wilkes was everywhere received with acclaim for the act he had
done; the secretary of the navy--one of the heads of the departments
of this government--approved of that act. I understand the act to have
been approved by the whole government. But in the meantime a state of
things had arisen making it necessary to resort to expediency in this
matter, to save the country from being involved in a war with Europe.
In that view, I would rather surrender these rebel refugees a thousand
times over than to have them the cause of war. Let England take them;
if she has a mind to fete and toast them, let her do it--it is none of
our business; if England desires to make lions of Confederate rebels,
it is a mere matter of taste. If they have to be surrendered then let
them be surrendered under a protest, while we shall remember hereafter
that there is a matter to be canceled between the British government
and the United States of North America.”
Before the close of the debate Mr. Vallandigham took the floor a second
time and stated that under the circumstances he would “prefer a war
with England to the humiliation which we have tamely submitted to; and
I venture the assertion that such a war would have called into the
field five hundred thousand men who are not now there, and never will
be without it, and have developed an energy and power in the United
States which no country has exhibited in modern times, except France,
in her great struggle in 1793.”
A few days after this debate occurred it was proposed in the house to
vote $35,000 to pay the expenses of an exhibit of the United States
at an international exposition which was soon to be held in London.
Mr. Lovejoy, of Illinois, objected to the measure, and said that the
United States had “been insulted, dishonored and disgraced by the
British nation.” Continuing he said: “That disgrace was all that the
nation could bear. We marched up to it ‘sweating great drops of blood.’
We approached it as Christ went up to the cross, saying, ‘if it be
possible, let this cup pass from us.’”
Mr. Lovejoy then said that inasmuch as the United States had submitted
to be dishonored by Great Britain he thought Americans ought to stay
at home until a time should come when they would be able to whip
the British nation. Then he would be willing to appear at a world’s
exhibition in London. He then likened his own grief to that of the
suffering Trojans as related by Æneas to Queen Dido.[2] “Every time
this Trent affair comes up,” said he, “every time that an allusion is
made to it; every time that I have to think of it, that expression of
the tortured and agonized Trojan exile comes to my lips. I am made
to renew the horrible grief which I suffered when the news of the
surrender of Mason and Slidell came. I acknowledge it, I literally
wept tears of vexation. I hate it; and I hate the British government.
I have never shared in the traditional hostility of many of my
countrymen against England. But I now here publicly avow and record
my inextinguishable hatred of that government. I mean to cherish it
while I live, and to bequeath it as a legacy to my children when I die.
And if I am alive when war with England comes, as sooner or later it
must, for we shall never forget this humiliation, and if I can carry a
musket in that war I will carry it. I have three sons, and I mean to
charge them, and do now publicly and solemnly charge them, that if they
shall have at that time reached the years of manhood and strength, they
shall enter into that war. I have always doubted the necessity of that
surrender. We might have, I think, secured an arbitration at least, and
compelled England to have recognized some rule as binding on herself
as the law of nations. This we have not secured. If, however, it was a
necessity, I could have submitted to it. But I have not reached that
exalted sublimation of Christianity which allows me to be insulted and
abused and dishonored without feeling some indignation. * * *
“Sir, I trust in God that the time is not far distant when we shall
have suppressed this rebellion, and be prepared to avenge and wipe
out this insult that we have received. We will then stir up Ireland;
we will appeal to the Chartists of England; we will go to the old
French habitans of Canada; we will join hands with France and Russia
to take away the eastern possessions of that proud empire, and will
darken every jewel that glitters in her diadem. Oh! it was so mean
and cowardly for a nation saying ‘father’ and ‘mother’ in the same
words that we do to come into the house of a brother in the day of his
calamity. I can not away with it.”
On January 6 President Lincoln sent to the senate a message
transmitting copies of the diplomatic correspondence relative to the
Trent case. Three days later the matter was discussed in an extended
speech by Mr. Sumner who ably defended the course of the United States
government in surrendering the commissioners. He held that the act of
Captain Wilkes could be easily vindicated by British precedents, but
that it became very questionable when tried by the liberal principles
which the United States had always avowed and sought to advance with
regard to the sea. He said that the American government, at an early
day, had adopted as its policy the principle that only officers or
soldiers could be stopped, thus positively excluding the idea of
stopping ambassadors or emissaries of any kind while sailing under a
neutral flag. In support of this statement Mr. Sumner reviewed American
diplomatic history from the beginning so far as it touched upon this
question. The doctrine of the United States was fully demonstrated by
quotations from the diplomatic dispatches of Monroe and Madison, also
by reference to the various treaties of the United States with foreign
nations.
“If I am correct in this review,” said Mr. Sumner, “then the conclusion
is inevitable. The seizure of the rebel emissaries on board a neutral
ship can not be justified according to our best American precedents and
practice.
“Mr. President, let the rebels go. Two wicked men, ungrateful to their
country, are let loose with the brand of Cain upon their foreheads.
Prison doors are opened, but principles are established which will help
to free other men, and to open the gates of the sea.”
This speech was timely and effective. It was well received throughout
the North. The newspapers commented upon it in the most favorable terms
and it doubtless did much to influence public sentiment in support of
the surrender.
The news that the British demand had been conceded was a disappointment
to the South. “The concession of Mr. Seward was a blow to the hopes
of the southern people. The contemplation of the spectacle of their
enemy’s humiliation in it was but little compensation for their
disappointment of a European complication in the war. Indeed, the
conclusion of the Trent affair gave a sharp check to the long cherished
imagination of the interference of England in the war, at least to the
extent of her disputing the blockade, which had begun to tell on the
war-power and general condition of the Confederacy.”[3]
The Richmond Examiner, a representative Confederate newspaper, said:
“Never since the humiliation of the Doge and Senate of Genoa before
the footstool of Louis XIV has any nation consented to a degradation
so deep. If Lincoln and Seward intended to give them up at a menace,
why, their people will ask, did they ever capture the ambassadors?
Why the exultant hurrah over the event that went up from nineteen
million throats? Why the glorification of Wilkes? Why the cowardly
insults to two unarmed gentlemen, their close imprisonment, and the
bloodthirsty movements of congress in their regard? But, most of all,
why did the government of Lincoln indulge a full cabinet with an
unanimous resolution that, under no circumstances, should the United
States surrender Messrs. Slidell and Mason? Why did they encourage the
popular sentiment to a similar position? The United States government
and people swore the great oath to stand on the ground they had taken;
the American eagle was brought out; he screeched his loudest screech of
defiance--then
‘Dropt like a craven cock his conquered wing,’
at the first growl of the lion. This is the attitude of the enemy.”
The Canadian press commented upon the release of Mason and Slidell in
the same spirit as did other newspapers that were hostile to the United
States. The Toronto Leader was very abusive and declared that the
surrender was one of “the greatest collapses since the beginning of
time.” The same journal had much to say concerning the “humiliation”
of the Federal government. The Montreal Gazette thought the affair was
a “bitter, bitter pill for the fire-eaters to cram down their noisy
throats.”
In England there was, of course, much rejoicing over the outcome of
the matter. The Federal government had been humbled in the eyes of
the world and British arrogance had triumphed once more. The English
press, including the reviews, generally sustained the course of the
government as being necessary and proper. It was said that in America
the unbridled passions of democracy controlled, that this force was
unyielding and unreasonable, and that a display of military power and
a menace of war was necessary to secure just concessions from such a
country.
The Quarterly Review discussed this matter as follows: “There ought,
then, to have been no difficulty nor demur in disavowing the act
of Captain Wilkes, which, we are told, was not authorized by his
government and of which he ostentatiously took the whole responsibility
upon himself; nor any delay in releasing the prisoners. This is what
we should expect from any other European power. But in America the
pressure of mob opinion was brought to bear with disastrous weight upon
a question the determination of which ought to have been left to the
calm and dispassionate judgment of reflecting men, responsible for the
character which the United States have to maintain in their relations
with foreign powers.”
Continuing his discussion the writer said that the Federal states
“are now undeceived as to the real attitude of England. They must see
that it is dangerous to try her patience too far. Her forbearance
will not be again mistaken for the whispers of fear or attributed to
the dictates of self-interest. We have shown that for the sake of
restoring to the protection of the British flag four strangers--for
whom personally we cared nothing--we were resolved to engage instantly
in war.”[4]
It was then said that those who assailed British honor in future would
know the consequences in advance. “The lesson has been read; we hope
it will be remembered,” continued the writer, “and whatever may now be
said of conciliatory letters it must not be forgotten by ourselves that
until we had evinced this determination by the dispatch of large and
formidable armaments every act of the American government went to show
that they fully intended to retain the prisoners.”[5]
Mr. Gladstone, then a member of the English cabinet, in a public speech
concerning the matter, tauntingly charged the American people with
being unstable and cowardly. He said: “Let us look to the fact that
they are of necessity a people subject to quick and violent action of
opinion, and liable to great public excitement, intensely agreed upon
the subject of the war in which they are engaged, until aroused to a
high pitch of expectation by hearing that one of their vessels of war
had laid hold on the commissioners of the southern states whom they
regarded simply as rebels. Let us look to the fact that in the midst
of that exultation, and in a country where the principles of popular
government and of democracy are carried to the extreme--that even,
however, in this matter of life and death, as they think it to be--that
while ebullitions were taking place all over the country, of joy and
exultation at capture--that even then this popular and democratic
government has, under a demand of a foreign power, written these words,
for they are the closing words in the dispatch of Mr. Seward: ‘The four
commissioners will be cheerfully liberated.’”[6]
In the exultation over the “victory,” as it was called, less notice was
taken of Mason and Slidell personally. Their importance to the British
nation diminished after they were surrendered. It was enough to know
that, under the menace of a foreign war in addition to the domestic
insurrection the United States government had yielded to a peremptory
demand to surrender the prisoners, and that they had actually been
restored to British protection again. The London Star said: “When Mason
and Slidell have been surrendered to us it will surely be time to
declare in what capacity we, as a nation, are to receive them--whether
as the envoys of Mr. Jefferson Davis or as inoffensive visitors to a
country where the rebel slave-owner and fugitive negro are welcome
alike to the protection of the law.” The Times said: “We do sincerely
hope that our countrymen will not give these fellows anything in the
shape of an ovation. The civility that is due to a foe in distress
is all that they can claim. We have returned them good for evil, and
sooth to say, we should be exceedingly sorry that they should ever be
in a situation to choose what return they will make for the good we
have now done them. They are here for their own interests, in order,
if possible, to drag us into their own quarrel, and, but for the
unpleasant contingencies of a prison, rather disappointed, perhaps,
that their detention has not provoked a new war. When they stepped on
board the Trent they did not trouble themselves with the thought of the
mischief they might be doing an unoffending neutral; and if now, by
any less perilous device, they could entangle us in the war, no doubt
they would be only too happy. We trust there is no chance of their
doing this, for, impartial as the British public is in the matter, it
certainly has no prejudice in favor of slavery, which, if anything,
these gentlemen represent. What they and their secretaries are to do
here passes our conjecture. They are personally nothing to us. They
must not suppose, because we have gone to the very verge of a great war
to rescue them, that therefore they are precious in our eyes. We should
have done just as much to rescue two of their own negroes; and had that
been the object of the rescue, the swarthy Pompey and Cæsar would have
had just the same right to triumphal arches and municipal addresses as
Messrs. Mason and Slidell. So, please, British public, let’s have none
of these things. Let the commissioners come up quietly to town and have
their say with anybody who may have time to listen to them. For our
part, we can not see how anything they have to tell can turn the scale
of British duty and deliberation. There have been so many cases of
peoples and nations establishing an actual independence, and compelling
the recognition of the world, that all we have to do is what we have
done before, up to the very last year. This is now a simple matter of
precedent. Our statesmen and lawyers know quite as much on the subject
as Messrs. Mason and Slidell, and are in no need of their information
or advice.”[7]
When the commissioners were surrendered, a portion of the British
troops dispatched to Canada to menace the United States had not yet
arrived. With a stroke of the wit which often characterized his dealing
with his opponents, Mr. Seward proceeded to inform the British consul
at Portland, Maine, that these troops would be permitted to land at
that city and pass freely through the territory of the United States
by rail to their destination, thus avoiding the risk and suffering
incident to a passage by the Canadian route beset by the snow and ice
of an inclement midwinter season.
AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES.
1. Congressional Globe, 2d Session 37th Congress.
2. London Quarterly Review, No. 221.
3. Lossing, B. J.: The Civil War in America, Vol. II.
4. Magazine of American History, March, 1886.
5. Newspapers, January, 1862, as follows: Richmond Examiner, Toronto
Leader, Montreal Gazette, London Star, London Times.
6. Paris, Compte de: History of the Civil War in America.
7. Pollard, E. A.: The Lost Cause.
8. Southern Law Review, Vol. VIII.
9. Sumner, Charles: Speech in the U. S. Senate, January 9, 1862.
10. Sumner, Charles: Works of, Vol. VII.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr. Vallandigham’s motive was probably different from that of any
other speaker on that occasion. See note, page 180.
[2] See the Æneid, Book II, line 3: “Infandum, regina, jubes renovare
dolorem,” etc.
[3] Pollard’s Lost Cause, p. 197.
[4] London Quarterly Review, No. 221, pp. 273-274.
[5] London Quarterly Review, No. 221, pp. 273-274.
[6] Speech at Edinburgh, January, 1862.
[7] See London Times, Jan. 11, 1862.