Talk:Trent Affair

message: In the novel, The Passionate Rebel, the author indicates that the capture was a set-up by the South (members of the adminstration of which knew the were-abouts of the hot-headed Wilkes).  Is there any indication that this might really have been the case?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.37.54 (talk) 11:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be a little late to answer your question, but Mason wrote to his wife shortly after his capture: "our purpose to embark on the mail steamer which was to leave Havana on the 7th November was well known in the city. We knew it had been spoken of and commented on by the consul of the United States at Havana and thus, would of course, reach the ears of Captain Wilkes, besides which I had visits at my hotel from the officers of that ship. Of course, in conversation with these gentlemen, I imported nothing touching our plans or purposes, but in the manner above noted, it became fully known to Captain Wilkes that we were to embark upon the mail steamer for England via St Thomas on the 7th of November". It's open to interpretation, but the envoys seem to have made no attempt to keep their travel plans secret and entertained Union naval officers at their hotel. Robcraufurd (talk) 23:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Ploy?

message: This article repeatedly refers to the United Kingdom in terms of it being a political entity as Great Britain. This is misleading as Great Britain is not and was not a state, it being the largest island of the British isles. Suggest cleanup.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greennoodle09 (talk • contribs) 13:39, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of Great Britain

message: This article introduces a "Lord Russell" without explaining who he is, why he's relevant, or linking to his biography in the text of the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.36 (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the original link was lost during revision but has now been remedied...John Russell, 1st Earl Russell.⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 00:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Russell? 

message: Had a motion to support a war against the Union ever come before parliament, it would have almost certainly been defeated as Britain had a clear anti slavery policy and surely could not have supported the Confederacy unless Canada had been directly attacked.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.86.71.241 (talk) 13:23, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's humourous (sic) that Britain was so bent out of shape by one of their ships being stopped on the high sees and people taken off against their will - only fifty years earlier they thought nothing of doing precisely the same thing on many occasions with American ships and American citizens.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.129.224.141 (talk) 16:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And only two years before, America had almost gone to war with Britain because the Royal Navy was boarding American slave ships off the coast of Cuba and liberating the cargoes. Lack of consistency is not just something that can be leveled at the UK. Robcraufurd (talk) 23:18, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: no -- in 1859 Britain almost went to war with SPAIN over the illegal slave trade. The US Navy was actively catching slave trade ships. see  Rjensen (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: "Britain and the United States probably came closest to war in 1858, when the British anti-slavery squadron began boarding American ships on the high seas to search for slaves being illegally transported from the African West Coast.... Congress voted funds to add ships to the navy, and two militia regiments volunteered for federal service." Fulton, Richard D. (1993) 'The London times and the Anglo-American boarding dispute of 1858', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 17:2, p134. Slightly earlier than I claimed, but real nonetheless. As for the idea that the US Navy was active, this very wiki describes them as "generally ineffective... In the 16 years of squadron operation, only the crew of 19 slave ships went to trial. These slavers were acquitted or only lightly fined." If you want further proof, see Huzzey, Richard, "Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain" (Cornell, 2012) p56; Canney, Donald L, "Africa Squadron: The U.S. Navy and the Slave Trade, 1842-1862" (Potomac 2006) passim; or the comments of Lord Palmerston (HC Deb 26 February 1861 vol 161 c950). Robcraufurd (talk) 17:31, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, Britain would not have gone to war in support of slavery  -  as Lincoln knew well. That is why he issued the Proclamation, turning it into an abolitionist war, which is not how it had started. Valetude (talk) 11:05, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Could Britain Have Supported A Slave State 

message: I'll remove phrase "in the name of cotton diplomacy" from the lead.  (It was added in the form "in the name of King Cotton" here, and changed to the present formulation here.)   A reference to cotton diplomacy in the lead may be adequate; but to state that the diplomats were to lobby for recognition "in the name of" King Cotton" or "cotton diplomacy" normally would mean that the diplomats in their negotiation explicitly referred to either term, for instance like speaking thus:
::On behalf of King Cotton, we request that you recognize the Confederated States of America as an independent state."
Thus, if you (or someone else) reinserts a reference to cotton diplomacy, then please formulate it in terms of for instance "on the strength of" or "based on" rather than "in the name of". JoergenB (talk) 20:00, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the name of... 

message: William Wilberforce had made the abolition of slavery a major cause in Britain, which outlawed the institution via the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. That constituency rejected both war and slavery, forcing London to appease the Americans.
:Not clear. What was this appeasement of the Americans? Valetude (talk) 05:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I dropped it as unsourced. William Wilberforce died in 1833.  Evangelicals in Britain supported US and were not pacifists. Rjensen (talk) 12:34, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarify, please 

message: The first paragraph states: "The U.S. Navy illegally captured two Confederate diplomats from a British ship; the UK protested vigorously. The United States ended the incident by releasing the diplomats."
Yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_American_Civil_War#Trent_Affair states: "It was generally then agreed that a nation at war had the right to stop and search a neutral merchant ship if it suspected that ship of carrying the enemy's dispatches. Mason and Slidell, Wilkes reasoned, were in effect Confederate dispatches and so he had the right to remove them." 
Whether Wilkes action was illegal or not is open to debate.
I propose the the first paragraph be changed to a more neutral statement of the facts: "The U.S. Navy seized two Confederate diplomats from a British ship; the UK protested vigorously. The United States ended the incident by releasing the diplomats."
::You need to show that historians agree with this idea. Rjensen (talk) 01:44, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "illegally captured" 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion