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The Trent Affair was a diplomatic incident in 1861 during the American Civil War that threatened a war between the United States and the United Kingdom. The U.S. Navy captured two Confederate envoys from a British Royal Mail steamer ; the British government protested vigorously.
Coat of Arms of Charles Wilkes. Wilkes was born in New York City, on April 3, 1798, the great nephew of the former Lord Mayor of London John Wilkes.His mother was Mary Seton, who died in 1802 when Charles was just three years old.
Both were able to obtain private meetings with high British and French officials, but they failed to secure official recognition for the Confederacy. Britain and the US were at sword's point during the Trent Affair in late 1861. Mason and Slidell had been seized from a British ship by an American warship.
The Trent Affair threatened to bring Britain into open war with the United States, despite triumphant rhetoric in the north. Even the cool-headed Lincoln was swept along in the celebratory spirit, but enthusiasm waned when he and his cabinet studied the likely consequences of a war with Britain.
A December 1861 cartoon in Punch magazine in London ridicules American aggressiveness in the Trent Affair. John Bull, at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water." A serious diplomatic dispute with the United States erupted over the "Trent Affair" in November 1861.
The incident strained United States relations with Britain almost to the breaking point and came to be known as the Trent Affair. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered Wilkes to take the prisoners to Boston, Massachusetts in the San Jacinto. The Harbor Pilot, Captain Abel F. Hayden, anchored the San Jacinto in the Boston channel. [6]
Lincoln ended the crisis, known as the Trent Affair, by releasing the two diplomats, who had been seized illegally. [38] British financiers built and operated most of the blockade runners, spending hundreds of millions of pounds on them. They were staffed by sailors and officers on leave from the Royal Navy.
Trent Affair [ edit ] As executive officer in San Jacinto , he was a participant in the 1861 " Trent Affair ," a diplomatic controversy involving the U.S. Navy's removal of Confederate commissioners from the British mail-steamer, RMS Trent .