Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 2.

[162] temper of the American Government, calculated to inflame the public mind and excite a warlike spirit, were put forth, such as the following, paraded conspicuously in the columns of the London times:

during the visit of the Prince of Wales to America, Mr. Seward took advantage of an entertainment to the Prince to tell the Duke of Newcastle he was likely to occupy a high office; that when he did so it would become his duty to insult England, and he should insult her accordingly.

in the mean time, Earl Russell's demand was communicated to the Government at Washington. It produced much indignation in the public mind, and there was a General disposition to give a flat refusal. The legality of Captain Wilkes's act was not doubted by experts in international law. British precedents were all in favor of it; and even a writer in the London times, two days before the date of Earl Russell's dispatch, admitted this fact, and complained only of the informality of Captain Wilkes, in taking the “Ambassadors” out of the Trent, instead of taking the ship itself with all on board into port, to have the case adjudicated in a court of admiralty. Such was a feature of the decision in the case, of the law officers of the Crown, in alluding to which Mr. Adams said, “in other words, great Britain would have been less offended if the United States had insulted her more.” ¹

in opposition to popular feeling and opinion, the Government decided to restore Mason and Slidell to the protection of the British flag; and the Secretary of State, in a very able letter to Mr. Adams, for the ear of the British Government, discussed the subject in the light in which the President had viewed it from the beginning. He corrected the misrepresentations of Captain Williams as to the facts of the capture, declaring that Captain Wilkes was not acting under instructions from his Government, but only “upon his own suggestions of duty;” ² “that no orders had been given to any one for the arrest of the four persons named,” and that the United States had no purpose or thought of doing any thing “which could affect in any way the sensibilities of the British nation.”

then, with the Queen's proclamation in mind, Mr. Seward spoke of the captives as pretended “Ministers Plenipotentiary, under a pretended commission from Jefferson Davis, who had assumed to be President of the insurrectionary party in the United States,” and so publicly avowed by him, and argued that it was fair to presume that they had carried papers known in law as dispatches.³ he also stated that it was asserted by competent authority that such dispatches, having escaped the search, were actually carried to England, and delivered to the emissaries of the conspirators there;⁴ also,