Combat· American Civil War
Trent Affair
The most dangerous diplomatic crisis of the war's first year, and a celebrated Marine boarding.
On 8 November 1861 the American warship USS San Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, stopped the British mail steamer Trent in the Bahama Channel, and a party of Marines and sailors boarded the neutral vessel and carried off two Confederate envoys, James Mason and John Slidell, bound for Europe to seek recognition for the Confederacy. The prisoners were brought back to Boston. Wilkes was hailed as a hero in the North, but the seizure of men from a British ship on the high seas brought the United States to the brink of war with Britain, which demanded their release. The Lincoln administration, unwilling to fight two wars at once, gave the envoys up. No casualties attended the boarding; the danger of the Trent affair lay entirely in its diplomacy.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 452