Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [259]
Seward composed an ingenious response, arguing that while Captain Wilkes had acted lawfully in searching the Trent, the legality of seizing contraband prisoners should have been decided by an American Prize Court. He recognized, he wrote, that he appeared to be taking “the British side” of the dispute “against my own country,” but he was “really defending and maintaining, not an exclusively British interest, but an old, honored, and cherished American cause.” The principle of referring such disputes to a legal tribunal, he reminded Britain, had been established nearly six decades earlier by Secretary of State James Madison when Britain had seized contraband from American ships in similar fashion. To “deny the justice” of the present British claim would be to “reverse and forever abandon” the very rationale upon which the United States had proudly stood in those earlier disputes. Therefore, in defense of “principles confessedly American,” the government would “cheerfully” free the prisoners and turn them over to Lord Lyons.
Seward presented his arguments in an extraordinary cabinet session on Christmas morning. The discussion continued for four hours. “There was great reluctance on the part of some of the members of the cabinet—and even the President himself” to accept Seward’s argument, Bates recorded. They feared “the displeasure of our own people—lest they should accuse us of timidly truckling to the power of England.” The prospect of returning the prisoners was “gall and wormwood” to Chase. “Rather than consent to the liberation of these men,” he wrote, “I would sacrifice everything I possess.” Only Monty Blair, the consummate realist, stood firmly with Seward at the start. At Lincoln’s invitation, Charles Sumner joined the session. As chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he had conferred with Lincoln frequently during the crisis, asserting that the government should not risk war with England. Sumner had read letters from two respected London officials to Lincoln and Seward, revealing that Britain did not want war and that “if the present dispute were settled amicably Britain would not interfere further in the North’s problems.” The presentations by Seward and Sumner gained some support; but the cabinet, unable to reach a conclusion, decided to meet again the following day to hear Seward present a new draft.
As the meeting adjourned, Lincoln turned to his secretary of state. “Governor Seward, you will go on, of course, preparing your answer, which, as I understand it, will state the reasons why they [the prisoners] ought to be given up. Now I have a mind to try my hand at stating the reasons why they ought not to be given up. We will compare the points on each side.”
Seward finished his twenty-six-page dispatch that night and read it to Chase at his house the next morning before the cabinet convened. After brooding through the night, Chase had concluded that Seward was right. “I am consoled by the reflection that while nothing but severest retribution is due to them, the surrender under existing circumstances, is but simply doing right,” he recorded in his diary.
When the cabinet met the following day, Seward presented his final draft. Though disturbed by the prospect of surrendering the prisoners, the members were relieved that no apology had been rendered and, as Seward boasted, “a great point was gained for our Government.” The dispatch was unanimously adopted. After the meeting, Seward asked Lincoln why he had not presented “an argument for the other side?” With a smile, Lincoln replied, “I found I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind, and that proved to me your ground was the right one.”
The following night, Seward hosted a dinner party to which he invited Senators Crittenden and Conkling and their wives, Orville Browning, Charles Sumner, Preston King, and English novelist Anthony Trollope, whom Fanny described as “a great homely, red, stupid faced Englishman, with a disgusting