This video is going to look at a really cool event that you’ve never heard of.
If hindsight is 20/20,
we’ve surely lost our glasses when looking back at the American Civil War,
sometimes failing to see the true nail-biter that it was; and a bloody one at that.
The death toll over the 4 year conflict was a devastating 625,000,
roughly 2% of the total population.
That’s more than both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam,
combined.
One in four soldiers never returned home.
One in thirteen returned home missing an arm or leg.
And it’s easy for us to shorten things in the history classroom.
Why did the North win the war?
Well, they had more soldiers and more industry;
more cash on hand and more man-power.
As historian Richard Current put it, “As usual, God was on the side of the heaviest
battalions”
True, but that ignores the event that we’re going to talk about today;
one that almost altered history.
This “affair” as it is today so innocently titled
could have given the South a winning advantage;
or, at the very least, the means by which to prolong the war
and the bloodshed longer that it did.
This moment that nearly changed the war
was the product of Northern anxiousness.
President Lincoln was under demoralizing pressure.
In the summer of 1861,
the Union lost the first major battle of the war in embarrassing fashion.
Sent to quell the rebellion early in Richmond, Virginia,
Union General McDowell was nervous about engaging
with his 32,000 inexperienced troops.
Beleaguered from political pressures to show strength against the rebels,
Lincoln assured him,
“You are green, it is true, but they are green also;
you are all green alike."
The 18,000 men with whom McDowell eventually engaged
were routed from battle by the confederates.
With the Union Army humiliated and running aimlessly towards Washington D.C.,
reality soaked through;
blood would likely drench many fields for longer than anyone had originally anticipated.
Off the battlefield, the South was far from a burgeoning new state;
they faced a dilemma of their own, and the clock was ticking.
You may be surprised to know that this problem wasn’t centered
about the strength of their unity,
nor the capacity of their leaders and citizens to engage wholeheartedly for the cause.
The biggest southern problem- was cotton.
In April 1861, President Lincoln established a naval blockade
of over 3,500 miles of confederate coastline,
and 12 major ports.
This gradually reduced Southern Cotton exports by 95%,
and limited their ability to transport supplies effectively to the front-lines.
Without cotton-cash from Europe, the South would surely lose the war.
European powers weren’t too pleased about the blockade either.
Though advocating neutrality,
countries like Great Britain relied on southern cotton for their textile mills.
Though opposed to the institution of slavery,
their de facto endorsement of this northern blockade directly hurt their economy.
This set the stage for conflict.
The south needed cash, and fast.
If they could convince the French and British to recognize them diplomatically,
then they could potentially end the blockade.
It wouldn’t even require Britain or France to ally with the south;
simple diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy would make the northern blockade illegal
according to maritime law, and this might force the European powers to intervene and
break it.
And so President Jefferson Davis sent two diplomatic envoys,
James Mason and John Slidell.
It would be their mission to run the blockade,
sail to Britain and France, and achieve diplomatic recognition.
If successful, Mason and Slidell could change everything.
The two diplomats sailed from Charleston, S.C.,
and upon missing their rendezvous with the CSS Nashville,
rerouted to Havana, Cuba,
where they awaited transport on the British mail steamer RMS Trent.
On November 7th, 1861,
the Trent was intercepted upon leaving Havana by the USS San Jacinto.
Captain Charles Wilkes, acting on a rumor that Mason and Slidell were onboard,
and importantly,
without direct orders from the US Government,
ordered the southern diplomats “confiscated” as contraband.
Mason and Slidell were arrested and transported to Fort Warren in Boston as prisoners.
Captain Wilkes single-handedly put the Northern cause in danger.
However, the Union was still in shock over the loss at Bull Run,
and this capture of Mason and Slidell gave the press and populace a reason to celebrate.
But this jubilation was ephemeral.
When word reached Europe on November 27,
the boarding of the Trent and imprisonment of Mason and Slidell
was perceived by the British public as a justification for war with the Northern States.
The British began planning for war,
sending troops to Canada, who at the end of December,
numbered at nearly 18,000.
More potent, they outlined a sacking of the Northern blockade in the South,
and a simultaneous new blockade on Union ports to be executed with the aid of the French.
President Lincoln had a critical decision to make.
Captain Wilkes, in interrupting Mason and Slidell's mission,
may have inadvertently accomplished it for them.
The Union could crumble under the weight of a multi-pronged war.
Here’s what Lincoln said…
“One war at a time”.
Thereafter, the North publicly disavowed the actions of Captain Wilkes,
and eventually released both Mason and Slidell.
Conflict between the Union and Europe were deescalated.
Thereby, history as we know it from our history classrooms,
was made.