Trent Affair

The Trent Affair
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Trent Affair
The Trent affair took place in 1861 and it involved the Great Britain and the United States. It was a political crisis that saw the two countries almost go to war. On 8th November, U.S Navy Captain Charles Wilkes ordered for the seizure of Confederate envoys from the British ship which was neutral, meaning they had not taken any side in the civil war. The neutral ship was on its way sailing to Europe to seek support from the south i.e. France and England to help in the civil war. The act of U.S arresting the neutral ship caused the Great Britain to charge her for infringement of international law since Britain was neutral to the civil war and had not yet sided. When the captain captured John Slidell and James Murray Mason, the two commissioners, the Britain government responded by protesting on the arrest and viewed it as illegal. She demanded that the US apologizes to her formally and liberates the Confederate envoys immediately. On the other hand, the US reacted by celebrating this as a victory in opposition to the Confederacy following a defeat at the Bull Run (Warren, 1981).
The two countries did not want to go to war but due to the US breach of Britain’s neutrality and diplomatic agreement of Trent affair trigged crises which led to both countries possibly going to war. Britain stopped weapons to America, sent more ships to Western Atlantic and also she sent troops to Canada in preparation for war.

France took a stand to support Britain on its plan to attack America. It put into place a plan to conquer the barrier of the American convoy that was in the south and also they planned to overpower American’s Northern ports. However, due to the poor communication in those days, the US didn’t get the information as urgently as the Britain expected. This delay in communication saw both sides calm down and there was an opportunity to solve the disparity peacefully. However, Great Britain still held on to their demands that Abraham Lincoln the United States president at that time had to address the issue (Ferris, 1977).
Considering that the United States was still at civil war, having another conflict with the Great Britain would make it worse since it would lead to them destroying the good foreign relationship that they had. Also, the Americans through the Confederacy looked forward to altering the British neutrality stand and make it take a side. This opportunity could be lost in case the two nations went to war. Charles Francis Adams was the US ambassador to Britain at that time. Due to his position he held talks with the British and gave them an assurance that united states were not intending to go to war in opposition to Great Britain. Additionally, he called upon the United States government to grand the demands made by the British. Lord Lyons, a British diplomat to the United States, had a meeting with William Seward who was the secretary of state. In the meeting, Seward defended the captain’s action of capturing the envoys saying it was legal but to avoid conflicts he settled the crises by agreeing to free the agents hence putting to an end the war tension between the two countries. Even though the United States managed to dissolve the crises that had happened, the mission for the commissioners Mason and Slidell did not accomplish their mission to influence the Europeans to side with the Confederates. The British did not change their neutrality but instead, they were willing to fight to maintain it at whatever cost. Therefore, the Americans lost the opportunity of support from Europe due to the Trent Affair even though they got a chance to restore good relations with the Europe. However, the threat of conflict between the two nations has never been as close as it was following the Trent Affair (Warren, 1981).
References
Ferris, Norman B. The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis. University of Tennessee Press, 1977.
Warren, Gordon H. Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas.
Northeastern Univ Pr, 1981.