For Love of God and Country: McIlvaine's Mission

Abstract

On Christmas Eve in 1860, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, the Episcopal bishop of Ohio, wrote to his dear friend and future biographer, Canon William Carus, regarding the state of affairs in the United States: You have probably seen, from the English papers, the prospect of secession by some of the Southern States from the Union. Congress is now sitting, and scarcely anybody seems to hope that the Union will be preserved, without some new confederation; and meanwhile there is the prospect this winter of great suffering. The uncertainty destroys confidence in business; hence great numbers everywhere are thrown out of employment. The States are so bound together by trade, intercourse, family relationship that the prospect of separation is most painful. All affects the interests of religion most deeply.1 Less than a year later, Bishop McIlvaine joined Carus in England in order to try to improve communications between the two countries and to convince members of Parliament to vote for pro-Union policies. But how could such an Episcopal bishop use his religious affiliations to influence international politics? What does a man of God know about the intricacies of a secular dispute? As the Anglican prong of Lincoln's diplomatic efforts in England, the Right Reverend Charles Pettit McIlvaine was chosen to help influence English politics and to convince England not to declare the Rebel states a sovereign country. And indeed, without McIlvaine's intercession, England might have interfered, on behalf of the Confederacy, in the War Between the States. The following is an account of one man whose extraordinary talents and devotion helped the United States in a time of great need. THE TRENT AFFAIR On 8 November 1861, the United States warship San Jacinto, under the command of Charles Wilkes, stopped the British steamship Trent. Two Confederate emissaries were traveling on the ship, John Murray Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana. The first had been sent by the Confederate government to gain diplomatic recognition from Great Britain and the second was to do the same in France. Wilkes forced the two diplomats and their secretaries off the Trent and brought them to Boston. While Wilkes initially was regarded as a hero in America, the British were outraged. It was over such British offenses that the war of 1812 had been fought; but now it was the United States that was breaking maritime law. War between the United States and Great Britain was a real possibility. What historians have left us regarding what happened next is largely inaccurate. According to most accounts, three men-Catholic Archbishop John Joseph Hughes, Episcopalian Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine, and politician/journalist Thurlow Weed-were sent to Europe to try to counteract the damage done by the Trent affair. However, thanks to Jay Schmidt2 and to additional material found in Kenyon College's archives since Schmidt's research, it is quite clear that biographers such as George Franklin Smythe were wrong to regard the missions of these men as a consequence of the Trent Affair. Smythe writes in his biography of McIlvaine, In 1861 when British opinion was greatly inflamed because of the Trent Affair, he [McIlvaine] visited England at the request of President Lincoln and exerted himself, particularly among the higher clergy, to make friends for the United States.3 Historians are not the only ones to blame-faulty reporting in newspapers also contributed to the problem. The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, for example, wrote that in connection with the Trent Affair...the good offices of Bishop McIlvaine, as intermediary, were requested by President Lincoln and the Secretary of State. The situation was eminently critical, and this commission of men of National reputation left for England at once.4 This article is an attempt to set the record straight regarding the 1861-62 mission to Europe and McIlvaine's role in alleviating the tensions between Britain and the United States inflamed by the Trent Affair. …