Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/464

426 was followed by the actual compulsion which it was demanded should be used and by which the commissioners were forcibly transferred from under the English flag to the boat for confinement aboard the &quot;San Jacinto. &quot; The &quot;Trent&quot; was then permitted to pursue her voyage, while the &quot;San Jacinto&quot; steamed away with her prisoners to Fortress Monroe, and on arrival was hailed with the hearty laudations of Congress and the compliments of some portions of the press. Captain Wilkes for a brief moment was the pride of the nation. But in a few days he heard himself condemned for his officiousness in terms which showed very clearly that he had involved his government in a very disagreeable and dangerous controversy with Great Britain.

The boarding of the &quot;Trent&quot; was an outrage of national amity which could not escape the indignation of all maritime nations. It was perpetrated by a zealot who was too stupid to foresee its ill effect on the relations which his own country was endeavoring to maintain with Europe, and it produced a sensation which for awhile seemed to threaten the total failure of coercion. It is not surprising that on getting the full news of the event President Lincoln said to the attorney general: &quot;I am not getting much sleep out of that exploit of Wilkes, and I suppose we must look up the law of the case. I am not much of a prize lawyer, but it seems to me pretty clear that if Wilkes saw fit to make that capture on the high seas, he had no right to turn his quarter-deck into a prize court.&quot; The shrewd President saw that Wilkes could not let the &quot;Trent&quot; go free, while he bore away from her the American passengers as "contraband," or as "conspirators," thus choosing to determine himself a question which only an admiralty court duly constituted could adjudicate. The President also soon realized that the rash act was very inopportune as well as illegal. Mr. Seward hurried to communicate with Mr. Adams, the United States minister at London, the shrewd suggestion that &quot;in the capture