Sold – The Lincoln Administration Implements the Lyons-Seward Treaty, which Finally Suppressed the International Slave Trade and Kept Britain Out of the Civil War

Just days after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln Extols the Treaty in His State of the Union Message.

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English entrance into the Civil War would have been a disaster for the Union. In fact, the Confederate long term effort rested on the ability of its diplomats to secure British recognition of its government.  This came to a head in October of 1861, when two Confederate diplomats, James Mason, and John...

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Sold – The Lincoln Administration Implements the Lyons-Seward Treaty, which Finally Suppressed the International Slave Trade and Kept Britain Out of the Civil War

Just days after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln Extols the Treaty in His State of the Union Message.

English entrance into the Civil War would have been a disaster for the Union. In fact, the Confederate long term effort rested on the ability of its diplomats to secure British recognition of its government.  This came to a head in October of 1861, when two Confederate diplomats, James Mason, and John Slidell, ran the Union naval blockade, heading to England to plead the Confederate case.  This blockade runner was the Trent, a British mail packet.  On the next day the USS San Jacinto, under the command of Captain Charles Wilkes, stopped the Trent on the high seas, boarded the vessel, and after a minor skirmish removed Mason and Slidell and their secretaries and delivered them to the U.S. for imprisonment. While feigning outrage, the Confederates were delighted with Wilkes’s action which involved the American boarding of a British vessel, as it hoped this might push England into its hands. The crisis intensified during November and December as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the House of Representatives, and the Northern press extolled Wilkes’s heroism.  But in Britain there was anger, and Prime Minister Palmerston was furious. Britain prepared for a possible war and sent more than eleven thousand troops to Canada. At Queen Victoria’s request, Prince Albert, although mortally ill, insisted that the government in London provide a way out for the Americans by allowing by allowing the Lincoln Administration to deny that Wilkes had acted under instruction.

The main negotiators of a resolution were William Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, and Lord Lyons, Britain’s Minister to the US.  On December 15, Seward informed the British that Wilkes had acted on his own and, while not violating international law, had made certain technical errors. The two diplomats would be “cheerfully liberated” and turned over to Lord Lyons.

The whole affair, although seemingly settled, raised a terrible specter in the minds of thoughtful Americans: England had sent troops across the Atlantic. Seward sought to capitalize on the positive momentum gained by the peaceful resolution of the Trent crisis and also wanted to eliminate for good the chance of England’s recognition of the Confederates or its entering the war.  Seward knew that although there was some sympathy in the British upper classes for the Confederacy, there was overwhelming opposition to slavery in Britain, which had outlawed the practice there decades earlier, to much celebration. So he approached Lord Lyons with an anti-slavery plan, and the two men negotiated the Lyons-Seward Treaty for the suppression of the African Slave Trade in early 1862. The agreement extended the reciprocal right to search and detain merchant ships off the coasts of Africa and Cuba and established prize courts in Sierra Leone, the Cape of Good Hope, and New York. This treaty completed efforts to end the Atlantic slave trade, which efforts had begun a half century earlier. It was a victory for American abolitionists, as it was the first outright abolition measure taken by the Lincoln Administration and indicated the direction it would soon take towards emancipation. And coming on a subject very close to the hearts of the British people and government, it was a clear demonstration that Britain had unofficially chosen sides. She and Union vessels would be allies on the high seas.  The Treaty would be signed into law in early Summer 1862. But the money needed to fully implement the Treaty would yet be forthcoming, and the Judges needed to supervise the Treaty’s provisions would not take their posts until late Spring / early Summer 1863.

As chairman of the Senate finance committee, William Fessenden prepared and carried through the Senate all measures relating to revenue, taxation, and appropriations, and, as declared by Charles Sumner, was “in the financial field all that our best generals were in arms.”  He would have been the point man for negotiations on appropriations bills with the House. This is the very letter of Seward, the Treaty’s American architect, to the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, requesting the appropriation.

Letter Signed, Department of State, Washington, January 27, 1863, to the Hon. W. P . Fepender, Chairman of Committee on Finance, U.S. Senate. “Sir, I have the honor to submit to you the following estimate, in detail, of the expenses to be incurred under the act to carry into effect the Treaty between the United States and her Britannic Majesty for the suppression of the African Slave Trade, passed July 11, 1862, viz: 

”For the Judge at New York $2,500
” ” Arbiter ” ” 1,000
” ” Judges at Sierra Leone Cape of Good Hope 5,000
” ” Arbitrators at do 4,000
” ” Clerks fees and one half of all other expenses of the Courts 4,500
Total $17,000

An appropriation for this amount for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1864, is requested.  I am sir your obedient servant, William H. Seward.”

This was a major event for Lincoln, who not only brought England in to help with the policing of the Slave Trade but struck a blow against the South.  Just days after his Emancipation Proclamation, at his 1863 State of the Union Address, this is the very first initiative he mentioned.

“The efforts of disloyal citizens of the United States to involve us in foreign wars to aid an inexcusable insurrection have been unavailing. Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, as was justly expected, have exercised their authority to prevent the departure of new hostile expeditions from British ports. The Emperor of France has by a like proceeding promptly vindicated the neutrality which he proclaimed at the beginning of the contest…It is especially gratifying that our prize courts, by the impartiality of their adjudications, have commanded the respect and confidence of maritime powers.  The supplemental treaty between the United States and Great Britain for the suppression of the African slave trade… has been duly ratified and carried into execution. It is believed that so far as American ports and American citizens are concerned that inhuman and odious traffic has been brought to an end.”

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