The Trent Affair

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At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the United States had a strained relationship with Great Britain, prompting Prime Minister Lord Palmerston of Britain to protect Great Britain’s economic interests and support the Confederate States of America. As Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell traveled to Great Britain to lobby for British support, Union Captain Charles Wilkes intercepted their vessel and removed the two men. This seemingly small event sparked an international conversation that forced the United States and Great Britain to take diplomatic action. This investigation will seek to answer the question: to what extent did the Trent Affair threaten war between the United States and Great Britain during …show more content…

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, formulated a plan to send James Mason, former Chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee and John Slidell, a prominent New Orleans lawyer, to Great Britain to garner British support and create a partnership between the two nations after Great Britain had proclaimed neutrality. On November 8, 1861, the two Confederate representatives were captured aboard the Trent, a British mail ship, by Union Navy Officer Charles Wilkes. Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was outraged, sternly calling his cabinet together by stating “I don’t know whether you are going to stand this, but I’ll be damned if I do!” Great Britain claimed that this conflict was in clear violation of their neutrality by the United States; the Confederacy’s belligerent status and Britain’s policy of neutrality formed a loophole in the United States’ foreign policy that made the United States look like the wrongdoer to the rest of the world. The Trent Affair appeared to Great Britain as the ‘climax of American arrogance,’ according to historian Ephraim Douglass Adams, and would require diplomatic maneuvering by the United States to keep them out of a second

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