Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [257]
By November 2, when the news was made public, the general reaction was that Lincoln was “justified” in his decision. Frémont no longer had “apologists or defenders” in Washington, the correspondent for the New York Times wrote; “the evidences of his unfitness for command have naturally so accumulated here—the headquarters of the army—that no defence of him is possible.” The Philadelphia Inquirer agreed. “Slowly and reluctantly we are forced to the conviction that General Fremont is unequal to the command of the Western army. The report of Adjutant-General Thomas, which we publish this morning, settles the question in our judgment.” In an unusually pro-administration editorial, the Democratic New York Herald noted with approval that while “Lincoln is not the man to deal unjustly or ungenerously with any public officer,” his firing of Frémont “had become a public necessity, to which the President could no longer shut his eyes; and this tells the whole story.”
Even Chase had to admit that Lincoln had handled the tangled situation admirably. “I am thoroughly persuaded,” he wrote a friend, “that in all he has done [concerning] Gen. F. the Prest. has been guided by a true sense of publ[ic] duty.”
ONE WEEK AFTER the resignation of General Scott and the dismissal of General Frémont, the administration faced a pressing new dilemma. Seward had received word that the Confederacy had dispatched two prominent Southerners, James Mason and John Slidell, to England to argue its case for formal recognition. Seward hoped to intercept the Confederate ship carrying the two former senators, but they had escaped the Union blockade in Charleston and reached Cuba, where they boarded the Trent, a British mail ship. On November 8, Union captain Charles Wilkes, in command of an armed sloop, encountered the Trent. Acting without official orders, he fired a shot across the bow and then proceeded to search the vessel. When Mason and Slidell were found, they were courteously escorted back to the Union sloop San Jacinto and taken to prison at Fort Warren in Boston. The British ship was allowed to continue its journey.
Captain Wilkes became a national hero to a North desperate for good news. “We do not believe the American heart ever thrilled with more genuine delight than it did yesterday, at the intelligence of the capture of Messrs. Slidell and Mason,” the New York Times reported. “If we were to search the whole of Rebeldom, no persons so justly obnoxious to the North, could have been found.” Wilkes was fêted at Faneuil Hall in Boston, and a great banquet was given in his honor. Cameron appeared before a throng of happy Washingtonians and led “three cheers for Captain Wilkes.” Bates recorded “great and general satisfaction” in his diary, while Chase reportedly said he regretted only that the captain had not gone one step further and seized the British ship.
Lincoln, too, seemed pleased at first. In a letter to Edward Everett, he spoke happily of “the items of news coming in last week,” first the Union victory at Port Royal, and “then the capture of Mason & Slidell!” His gratification was soon mingled with anxiety, however, when Britain’s furious reaction to the incident became known. It took nearly three weeks for news of Mason and Slidell’s capture to reach London, but, as The Times reported, the “intelligence spread with wonderful rapidity.” The complex situation was promptly reduced to a slogan: “Outrage on the British flag—the Southern Commissioners Forcibly Removed From a British Mail Steamer.” The London press fulminated against the incident as an explicit violation of the law of nations, demanding “reparation and apology.” Fabricated details of the capture