The American government did not authorize the act of Captain Wilkes and knew nothing about it until Captain Wilkes arrived and reported it. Captain Wilkes believed that what he had done was “a simple legal and customary belligerent proceeding to arrest and capture a neutral vessel engaged in carrying contraband of war for the use and benefit of the insurgents.” The “four persons taken from the _Trent_ by Captain Wilkes, and their despatches, were contraband of war.” If the envoys were contraband, Captain Wilkes had a right, under the law of nations, to capture the _Trent_, but _the contraband_ “_has a right to a fair trial of the accusation against him_.” “The neutral state that has taken him under its flag is bound to protect him, if he is not contraband, and is therefore entitled to be satisfied upon that important question.” Both the accused and the neutral state have a right to demand “a tribunal and a trial.” In the _Trent_ case there was neither tribunal nor trial. Captain Wilkes constituted himself captor, judge, and executioner. A very great wrong had been done. For this wrong “the British Government has a right to expect the same reparation that we, as an independent State, should expect from Great Britain or any other friendly nation in a similar case.” “The four persons in question are now held in military custody at Fort Warren in the State of Massachusetts. They will be cheerfully liberated.” The comment of Commodore Joseph Smith on Seward’s letter sums it up admirably. In a letter to Flag Officer Foote he says, “It is ingenious, _gassy_, too long, but able.” It is to be observed that the letter of Mr. Seward did not contain the word regret nor any form of apology. It stated the case and argued it, and admitted that an error--“simply an inadvertency,” on the part of a naval officer--had been made, and agreed to deliver up the prisoners. Whether the Secretary should have expressed regret when he admitted the wrong, the reader can judge for himself. What Lord Russell thought about this point is not told in the documents, but what he said was that “Her Majesty’s Government have arrived at the conclusion that they (the matters in Mr. Seward’s letter) constitute the reparation which Her Majesty and the British nation had a right to expect.”