The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis (review)

BOOK REVIEWS271 cessfully to bring learning to her fellow slaves. If the letters are filled with lengthy descriptions of everyday activities (plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting), they are also filled with glimpses of the attitudes of black Americans toward their brethren in Africa, revelations about the deep impact of American values on privileged Negroes, and perhaps the best analysis yet of the ambiguous position of the black slave driver (cajoler, coaxer, commander). This well-edited volume, with its useful bibliography, is a most important addition to the literature of slavery and the Civil War era. Lohen Schweninger University of North Carolina, Greensboro The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis. By Norman B. Ferris. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1977. Pp. xii, 280. $14.95.) The last Anglo-American crisis serious enough to threaten full-scale war occurred late in 1861, at a time when the Lincoln administration was digesting its bitter realization that the CivilWar would be long and hard. A Union naval officer, exercising the much-touted initiative of American military men, stopped a British mail packet and took off two Confederate agents bound for European posts. The Northern public, starved for victories, acclaimed Captain Charles D. Wilkes as a hero, but the British government demanded the release of the prisoners and prepared to fight. In a war with England American forces might haveseized Canada, which was almost defenseless, but a British blockade of Northern ports and a full military, political, and economic Anglo-Confederate alliance would probably have resulted in the division of the United States. Realizing this, Lincoln and Seward eventually decided to release the prisoners, and Seward covered the embarrassing retreat with a smokescreen of involved and unconvincing rationalizations. Norman B. Ferris' straightforward account of these proceedings is the sequel to a study of Seward's earlier conduct of foreign relations; whether Ferris intends further volumes is not clear. His research is impressively thorough, embracing American, British, and French archives , many private collections, and nearly every pertinent published source—excluding, however, the recent excellent study by David P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers: 1861-1865 (New York, 1974). Crook's account of the Trent affair, though shorter than Ferris', does not differ markedly, but it gives more attention to the background of the crisis and its long-range effects on the conduct of the CivilWar and on Anglo-American relations. As Ferris suggests in his subtitle and preface, he has set out to demonstrate "how easily a serious international crisis may accidentally arise and how afterward—through the exercise of diplomatic statesmanship—such a crisis may be terminated without war" (p. viii). 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY Hehas succeededhandily inhis firstintention. In establishing"diplomatic statesmanship" he gives Seward the principal credit for the decision to release the Confederate commissioners and reduces Lincoln to a mere shadow. (Crook's accountis more balancedhere.) Ferris does not ignore Seward's earlier Anglophobic outbursts, which form an important part of the background, but he dismisses them as unimportant, exaggerated by others (for example, James Gordon Bennett), and an unfair representation of the Secretary's true balance and thoughtfulness. A fuller discussion in the text of various other interpretations of the crucial decision to release the prisoners would help. Ferris does mention other views, but these comments, along with many other interesting amplifications are relegated to the back of the book, where most readers will overlook them. Ferris treats at length British reactions to the stopping of the Trent, althoughhe perhaps underplays the roles of Prince Albert and of British businessmen. He amusingly characterizes the American jubilation as "the public chortle from across the Atlantic Ocean" (p. 147) but gives it much less attention than he does to British indignation. Crook's analysis of American reactions is more complex. The resistance of many Americans (including Lincoln) to releasing the prisoners suggests that the Trent affair was a little more than a "diplomatic crisis". David M. Pletcher Indiana University The Press, Politics, and Patronage: The American Government's Use of Newspapers, 1789-1875. By Culver H. Smith. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1977. Pp. xv, 351. $18.50.) Culver H. Smith presents the complex subject of how "printing, politics and patronage...