The Trent Affair was a non-issue

[FortyRounder]

There are a lot of interesting Civil war history blogs out there these days. One of my favorites in Brett Schulte's. Brett often corresponds with acknowledged experts in Civil war topics and posts them on his blog for discussion with his readers.

For example, how many of us have been told that the United States and Britain came dangerously close to war in late 1861, until Lincoln backed down, supposedly saying "one war at a time"? Brett's blog recently featured a discussion with an author who believes that the Trent Affair was not much of a crisis at all, just posturing by PM Palmerston to increase his popularity. The rival governments had been enjoying friendly relations for decades, and Sec of State Seward even allowed the arriving Redcoats to pass through Maine on their way to Canada! Check it out: http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2...or-phil-myers/

[CJDaley]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

Are you sure?

In hindsight I think most of us who didn't live through the Cuban Missile Crisis can say it was just posturing, but I still believe the threat was real.

While Britain may never have sent troops to help the South, they may have begun a more active policy of making sure their cargo was protected and helped undermine the blockade.

[john duffer]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

I DID live through the Cuban Missle Crisis and nobody thought it was posturing at the time.

[CJDaley]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

I DID live through the Cuban Missle Crisis and nobody thought it was posturing at the time.

Zactly. My dad was in the army at the time and you better believe it was real for him.

However, I was born ni 1970 and our history books told a different story and I think it's too easy for us 'youngsters' to blow off issues like the Cuban MC or the Trent Affair as political events since they didn't come to blows.

Neither was a non-issue.

[MBBursig]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

I think it is important to note, that although England and the U.S. were enjoying the start of friendly relations during the mid-19th century, there was still the "threat" from them. The War of 1812 was not far out of the minds of many Americans, "54/40 or fight" in regards to Oregon was barely 2 decades in the past, Americans were "boasting" our Monroe Doctrine, and Britain was the "Imperial Power" or the "Jewel in the Crown". It was an issue, a definite issue.

I barely touch on this in the 11th grade hist. course I teach, but it was an issue. Something that apparently bothered Lincoln.

[FortyRounder]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

Zactly. My dad was in the army at the time and you better believe it was real for him.

However, I was born ni 1970 and our history books told a different story and I think it's too easy for us 'youngsters' to blow off issues like the Cuban MC or the Trent Affair as political events since they didn't come to blows.

Neither was a non-issue.

The point that this expert on U.S.-British relations during the CW was trying to make was that the Trent Affair would never have led to blows. You should read the blog entry; it's very interesting.

Also, I don't think 8,000 Redcoats in Canada is of the same significance as a potential nuclear holocaust.

[Auld Pelty]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

Will,

Great Britain was heavily dependent on the cotton trade with the South and by the time of the Trent business, there was a crisis as a direct result of the Blockade. People in Lancashire were literally starving and the government was fearful of riots by early 1862. All these things, including sympathy for Confederates could have lead to a military intervention of some sort. Have you never heard of the Lancashire Cotton Famine?

http://www.revealinghistories.org.uk/cotton-famine

There was a lot of political intrigue over Britain's involvement in the War and the Trent Affair was indeed a part of it. The Great Centralizer did what he did best. He bambozzled many Brits into believing the War was being fought to free slaves (i.e.EP) while the British government set up soup kitchens. Those were just two examples of non military intervention that favored the Union's interest.

[Danny]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

... The Great Centralizer did what he did best. He bambozzled many Brits into believing the War was being fought to free slaves...

Fergus -

Between being bamboozled by the Confederate States into believing the War was being fought over States' rights (when the only right that mattered was the right to keep and expand slavery) and being bamboozled by the United States into believing the War was being fought to free slaves (when the only reason that mattered was because it would make saving the Union possible again), England would have to be pretty naive not to realize both sides were playing a game.

Anyway, England bamboozled the United States into believing that the warships they were building weren't for the Confederacy, because they promised they would remain neutral.

Short story is, none of the three parties were naive to the others, and the Trent affair was just used as a lever to gain another advantage: they gained a favor owed from the U.S. in a later negotiation. Only many years later would the U.S. settle with England over damages caused by the warships they sold to the Confederates. Just a game, like the battleship Maine incident in the Span Am War or Cuban missile incident in the Cold War. Cards played and the kitty collected.

There were two prior years of surplus cotton built up in English warehouses so they didn't care all that much about continued supplies from the Confederate States. By then there were competing world alternate sources as well. Whatever caused the hungry masses there, it wasn't primarily the lack of Confederate cotton.

Dan Wykes

[john duffer]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

"Just a game, like the battleship Maine incident in the Span Am War or Cuban missile incident in the Cold War. "

I was too young at the time to remember the Maine :) but I definitely remember holding my breath as we decided to intercept and search Russian ships. If DEFCON 2 was a game it was good one, ha ha, they sure fooled me. You have to have grown up with fallout shelters, nuclear drills, "We will bury you !",daily pictures of missle sites on the front page of the paper, etc to fully understand the attitude at the time.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

After reading the blog I can understand why the writer would think that Great Britain would not have declared war on the United States, but it's a pretty high level analysis that doesn't look closely at how many people in the U.S. and Britain felt at the time. As previous posters have pointed out, it probably felt real enough, especially for those old enough (as many generals still serving in the US army were) to remember the last war with Britain.

More importantly, whether the nations actually did or didn't come close to war in late 1861 and early 1862, the Trent Affair still had significance for a couple of reasons.

First, it affected northern finances. I'm now reading Wesley Clair Mitchell's The History of the Greenbacks and it seems fairly clear from his analysis that the financial crisis brought about by the threat of war with Britain proved a major factor in the decision to move from the gold standard and the "demand note" to the legal tender "greenback." In fact it directly led to both public and private suspensions of gold payments in December '61. The issue of legal tender currency had a huge effect on the U.S. government's ability to finance the war. Despite the resulting inflation, the greenback provided essential liquidity, without which the north could hardly have raised and supported its then-vast army and navy.

Second, a significant and influential segment of the English press and leadership had a great deal of sympathy for the south, which might not have led to out-and-out war, but could have resulted in a greater level of support than did occur. Certainly greater investments of sterling in Confederate junk bonds and cotton bonds would have helped the southern war effort. But the public discussion that resulted from the Trent incident and the cotton crisis revealed a broad sympathy for the north among the working classes and liberals, which probably played a factor in restraining the Palmerston government.

Some interesting contemporary reportage of Anglo-American relations at this time, including a couple of articles in the New York Tribune, can be found here in the works of Karl Marx, who was living in England at the time, and well up on current affairs: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...-war/index.htm

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: Antebellum English/American relations

The relationship between the nations was not always squeeky clean.

The 1840s not the happiest times over the nature of who possessed the Oregon Territory: http://tinyurl.com/chqpm3 (see page 98)

In Dean Mahin's One War at a Time, he has quite a bit of discussion about the Trent Affair/Crisis. You can read some of it online (limited preview): http://tinyurl.com/depqtu. Nevertheless, you will find some text there that shows immediately following the capture of the ships that some of the British press was furious. The Morning Chronicle called Lincoln "feeble confused" and "little minded mediocrity" and Secretary of State Seward "the firebrand at [Lincoln's] elbow" who was "exerting himself to provoke a quarrel with all of Europe, in that spirit of wreckless egotism that induces the Americans...." (Mahin, One War at a Time, Brassey's: Washington, D.C., 1999, 66).

I think it is important to understand the evolution of HOW Mason and Sliddell got released and that in all things tense there is some public opinion. This is no different. Obviously Lincoln understood that he could not handle a war on an international level in 1861. Still, British and American relations were strained.

Mahin's chapter on Union Relations with Britain and Canada, 1864-1865 further explores this. Various officials thought that America seemed determine to fight the British, Lord Lyons, the British minister to Washington and Charles Francis Adams the American minister to London both seemed to think that the other country was up to no good. As Adams's secretary noted after Lincoln's reelection "The English don't like the reelection of Mr. Lincoln and grieve over it as if it werea disaster to themselves." (Mahin, 245) That isn't to say that all the English hated the North but it is also to point to relations not being perfectly blissful in the 1860s.

From the historical narrative point-of-view we of course need to be aware of why there was no war; but from the perspective of first person interpretation we also need to be aware of opinions in the moment that rapidly changed.

[Michael Comer]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

[QUOTEYou have to have grown up with fallout shelters, nuclear drills, "We will bury you !",daily pictures of missle sites on the front page of the paper, etc to fully understand the attitude at the time.[/QUOTE]

True, true, true! I was a young child at the time and my dad was Air Force stationed at Eilson AFB near Fairbanks, Alaska. We were a SAC base with B'52's in the air all the time with nukes on them in case a strike was called. That was SOP. And in that era we spent about 30 minutes each month at school practicing 'drop and cover'. It probably wouldn't have done us much good though since we would have been obliterated in a first strike.

When the missile crisis occured, the base was on red alert for days and kids weren't allowed to play outside after school. The place looked like a ghost town. We lived on base housing and the units had basements, so we were told to build a bomb shelter in a section of it and C rations were issued to each family with the idea that we would be able to hole up until radiation danger was past.

I also remember my dad having helmet, weapon and field gear by the door in case he had to head out for whatever reason.

Now if something like that leaves a profound impact and such vivid memories on a 6 year old, I'd say it was a pretty important event even though nothing drastic happened in the end.

[Union Navy]

Re: The Trent Affair was a non-issue

Mason and Slidell were on a mission that was doomed to failure anyways, especially after the Confederate looses at Shiloh and Malvern Hill (due to the presence of US Navy warships) and the capture of New Orleans (by the US Navy). Lincoln perhaps realized they were harmless if released, but a dangerous weapon if confined.

Anti- British feeling was running high, as evidenced by a popular song of the time:

To Capt. John Ericson
Inventor of the Monitor
"Oh! Give Us a Navy of Iron" (1862)
The Popular Naval Ballad
Sung by J. H. Rainer
at Sanford's New Opera-House
Words by D. Brainerd Williamson
Music by James W. Porter

1.
O give us a Navy of Iron,
And to man it our Yankee Lads;
And we'll conquer the world's broad oceans,
With our Navy of Ironclads;
Then adieu to Britannia's power,
We'll crush it whenever we please;
The Lion shall yield to the Eagle,
And Columbia shall rule the seas.

CHORUS

O give us a Navy of Iron, and to man it our Yankee Lads;

And we'll conquer the world's broad oceans with our Navy of Ironclads.

2.
Old England the foe of our fathers,
And the foe of their children today,
Is gloating in hopes that our Union
In darkness is passing away.
But Treason shall die in its ashes,
And stronger than ever before;
We'll turn on the jealous old tyrant,
And punish John Bull at his door.

(CHORUS)

3.
And where in the wide world a nation,
That could cope with our Iron Jacks?
We would sweep all their seas and their harbors,
Of their Warriors and Merrimacs.
Then give us a Navy of Iron
And we’ll fling our flag to the breeze
And prove to the despots of Europe,
That freedom must reign on the seas.

(CHORUS)