High Seas Brouhaha - November ‘98 America’s Civil War Feature

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High Seas Brouhaha

By Kenneth P. Czech

When an overzealous Union captain stopped and searched the British vessel Trent, a full-blown diplomatic crisis erupted between the United States and Great Britain. Interested Southerners watched with glee.

As U.S. Navy Lieutenant D.M. Fairfax stood in the bow of a bobbing whaleboat at midday of November 8, 1861, he was faced with a dilemma. Ahead loomed the bulk of the British mail steamer Trent. His orders were to remove–forcibly if necessary–two Confederate agents on their way to London. He was also to seize the vessel as a prize of war. Either act, he believed, could lead to war between the United States and Britain. Yet the instructions received from his commanding officer were explicit.

Fairfax’s confusion stemmed from several factors, most notably Britain’s declaration of neutrality in May 1861 and its recognition of the Northern and Southern states as formal belligerents. Such a dictate opened British ports to Confederate shipping as well as Northern. Likewise, British munitions and supplies could be transported by Union or Rebel vessels to North American ports.

To many observers and politicians in the North, however, London’s declaration was but a short step away from recognizing the Confederate states as a sovereign nation. The Richmond government banked on the hope that both France and England could be induced to accept the Confederacy into the family of nations because of the need for Southern cotton by European mills. Prior to the Civil War, England and Continental Europe imported from 80 to 85 percent of its cotton from the South. Nearly one-fifth of the British population earned its livelihood from the cotton industry, while one-tenth of Britain’s capital was invested in it as well. There was good reason for the South to court the European governments.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis assigned a pair of trusted political cronies to represent the South in London and Paris. James M. Mason, a former senator from Virginia, had gained experience as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. His assignment as minister to Britain was not to beg “for material aid or alliances offensive and defensive but for. . . a recognized place as a free and independent people.”

Sixty-eight-year-old John Slidell was to transact diplomatic business with France. A wily politician, Slidell had served as a Louisiana senator and had only minor diplomatic experience in previous dealings with Mexico. He was, however, fluent in French.

Both Mason and Slidell hurried to Charleston, S.C., to gain passage on the fast blockade runner Nashville. Accompanying them were two secretaries, James E. Macfarland and George Eustis, as well as members of Slidell’s family. When they reached Charleston in early October 1861, they found several Union warships blockading the harbor just beyond the range of Confederate coastal defense guns. Though armed, Nashville was too weak to provoke a battle with Yankee cruisers and usually relied on speed to sneak past picket ships.

Realizing the dangers of trying to run the blockade, Mason and Slidell opted for going overland through Texas and into Mexico, where they hoped they could book passage on a British ship to take them to London. Before they could attempt the journey, however, the captain of a shallow-draft coastal packet, Gordon, offered to take the diplomats to Cuba, where British vessels regularly docked.

Rain squalls buffeted Charleston as Gordon slipped from her quay just after midnight on October 12. The little ship, packed with coal and passengers, threaded its way through shallow waters where the deep-draft Nashville could not have gone. The storms and darkness served as perfect cover as the Rebels slid past Federal blockaders and steamed toward the open sea. “Here we are,” Mason wrote gleefully, “on the deep blue sea; clear of all the Yankees. We ran the blockade in splendid style.”

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