Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

From the first England would look at the Trent affair only as a cause of war. The whole country desired that our government should hold Mason and Slidell, and for a time we did hold them. But after much consideration Mr. Seward, always fearful that England would do something against us, consented to return Mason and Slidell, upon the ground that the Trent, although captured, was not brought in. That was a subterfuge on our side, and a sneak on England's side. If the capture of these men was such an offence against the dignity of England, simply letting them go did not seem much of a reparation of that wounded pride, being on a technical point only. It seemed to me to be a good deal like this: A man is arrested for being a thief and counterfeiter. He and his friends bluster loudly against that charge and demand his release. The captor says: “Well, I will let him go, as there is a technical defect in the warrant;” and the rescuers are satisfied.

For myself, I am obliged now to declare, as I did then, that it was the most fatal mistake on our part that could have been made, not to have a war with England if she chose. Oh! says one, we would have had the whole English army upon us. To that I answer: England of her own soldiers has never had more than twenty-five thousand men on any one battle-field. The time has gone past for buying Germans to fight her battles. We had more soldiers starve at Andersonville than England had men at Waterloo — and a larger part of those at Waterloo were commanded by an Irishman. We were raising armies by hundreds of thousands. If England had attacked us, the vast advantage would have been that it would have made our war a foreign war, in which everybody must have taken part, North and South, who was not a traitor to his country. No Democrat or Copperhead party could have resolved against the war in that case. It would have been a war in which everybody must of necessity have engaged, in one form or another, to save the life of the country. Whoever fought for England and against us at the South would have been a traitor to his own portion of the country. Canada would not have been in our way at all. Ninety days would have enlisted Irishmen enough to take Canada. That could have been taken by contract. It was the beginning of winter; the frost had made a bridge over every stream, and a road for march could be built many miles a day to any place. The