Seward’s reply was immediately printed in the American papers.  Lyons reported that it was very well received and that the public was calm and apparently contented with the outcome[475].  He thought that “thus the preparation for war ... has prevented war.”  Seward’s argument reviewed at great length all the conditions of the incident, dilated on many points of international law both relevant and irrelevant, narrated the past relations of the two nations on “right of search,” and finally took the ground that Mason and Slidell were contraband of war and justly subject to capture, but that Wilkes had erred in not bringing the Trent, with her passengers, into port for trial by an American prize court.  Therefore the two envoys with their secretaries would be handed over promptly to such persons as Lyons might designate.  It was, says Seward’s biographer, not a great state paper, was defective in argument, and contained many contradictions[476], but, he adds, that it was intended primarily for the American public and to meet the situation at home.  Another critic sums up Seward’s difficulties:  he had to persuade a President and a reluctant Cabinet, to support the naval idol of the day, to reconcile a Congress which had passed resolutions highly commending Wilkes, and to pacify a public earlier worked up to fever pitch[477].  Still more important than ill-founded assertions about the nature of contraband of war, a term not reconcilable with the neutral port destination of the Trent, was the likening of Mason and Slidell to “ambassadors of independent states.”  For eight months Seward had protested to Europe “that the Confederates were not belligerents, but insurgents,” and now “his whole argument rested on the fact that they were belligerents[478]....  But this did not later alter a return to his old position nor prevent renewed arguments to induce a recall by European states of their proclamations of neutrality.

On the afternoon of January 8, a telegram from Lyons was received in London, stating that the envoys would be released and the next day came his despatch enclosing a copy of Seward’s answer.  The envoys themselves did not reach England until January 30, and the delay in their voyage gave time for an almost complete disappearance of public interest in them[479].  January 10, Russell instructed Lyons that Great Britain was well satisfied with the fact and manner of the American answer, and regarded the incident as closed, but that it could not agree with portions of Seward’s argument and would answer these later.  This was done on January 23, but the reply was mainly a mere formality and is of interest only as revealing a further shift in the opinion of the legal advisers, with emphasis on the question of what constitutes contraband[480].  Possibly the British Government was embarrassed by the fact that while France had strongly supported England at Washington, Thouvenel had told Cowley “... that the conduct pursued by Capt.  Wilkes, whether