191-^] BALCH— SOME FORMER MEMBERS. 589 



George Gordon Meade, of Pennsylvania, commander of the 

 Army of the Potomac, who held the supreme command for the 

 Union during the three days' battle at Gettysburg,^' where the flood 

 tide of the Confederacy was halted and forced to ebb, was elected a 

 member in 1871. 



Charles Wilkes, of New York, the discoverer of Wilkes Land 

 in East Antarctica, ^^ who announced to a disbelieving world that 

 in the Antarctic there was a land continental in size, was also a 

 member. Like Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, the fame of Com- 

 modore Wilkes circled the globe, when early in the Civil War, Cap- 

 tain Wilkes, as he then was, in command of the San Jacinto, took 

 from the British mail steamer Trent, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, two 

 southern " gentlemen of distinction," who were on their way to 

 Europe to try to represent the Confederate States respectively at 

 the courts of St. James and the Tuilleries. Wilkes's bold action 

 almost caused a war between this country and Great Britain, that 

 was averted only by the prompt surrender of the Confederate " en- 

 voys " to Great Britain. That act established the rule of interna- 

 tional law, that the representatives of a belligerent to a neutral 

 power when navigating the high seas under a neutral flag cannot be 

 captured. At the time, the action of Wilkes was condemned gen- 

 erally outside of the United States as a flagrant breach of the law 

 of nations, and by none more so than by distinguished British publi- 

 cists such as Montague Bernard and Sir William Vernon-Harcourt, 

 " Historicus." The passage of time, however, has brought out 

 proof, through the then British Premier, Lord Palmerston, that in 

 the opinion of the best international legal advisers at that time of 

 the British crown — Sir William Atherton, Attorney-General, Sir 

 Roundell Palmer, Solicitor General (afterwards Lord Selborne) 

 and Dr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Phillimore, counsel to the Admi- 

 ralty — Captain Wilkes had acted according to international law as 

 upheld in practice by Great Britain herself by no less an authority 



" The Pennsylvania Magasine of History and Biography, Philadelphia, 

 191 1, pages 1-40. 



" Edwin Swift Balch, " Antarctica," Philadelphia, 1902 ; " Why America 

 should Re-explore Wilkes Land," Proceedings American Philosophical So- 

 ciety, 1909. 



