November 2026 Header Image: The Trent Affair
This month’s header image is a political cartoon depicting the Trent Affair, which took place in November 1861. This albumen print, called “The Great Surrender,” is now housed in the Library of Congress. It depicts an action in the first year of the Civil War, when Union Captain Charles Wilkes of the USS San Jacinto detained two Confederate diplomats who set sail for England. James M. Mason and John Slidell about the RMS Trent were on a diplomatic mission to receive British support for the Confederacy. Mason and Slidell are aboard a ship in the background of the image, with England’s Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell in the left foreground and President Lincoln’s Secretary of State William S. Seward in the right foreground. Confederate President Jefferson Davis is seen stomping away to the right.
Interested in reading more about the Trent Affair? Check out Neil Chatelain’s blog post, The Trent Affair’s Diplomatic Winners and Losers.
Wilkes had been a brutal and arbitrary commander of the South Seas Expedition.of 1838 and following. However, his botanical specimens are the foundation of our National botanical Garden in DC.