That's a comedy written by Jonathan Swift. The Americans and the English arguing about which end of a soft boiled egg should be opened first.
That is a terrible characterization of it. What is at stake here is the entire concept of neutrality and the freedom of the seas.
20,000 people are going to die and the British are going to spend 5 million pounds because some over zealous idiot took two Confederate wannabe diplomats off a British ship? What an enormous humbuggery!
No, the British are goiong to go to war because the US has
supported the actions of Wilkes. The British ultimatum was intended to shock the Americans into apologizing - because the actions of Wilkes make a mockery of the concept of neutrality and because the reaction of the US to this was to vote him the thanks of Congress and celebrate publicly. The British had already been seeing the US playing fast and loose with neutrality law, but the boarding of the Trent was a total violation of it. Among the many ways it was illegal, the US had spent the past several years insisting it was not possible to sign a mutual right of seach treaty with the British and the past several months protesting that the British had recognized the CSA as a belligerent - even though that recognition as a belligerent was the only thing letting them blockade the South at all.
The Union had been trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and as far as the British were concerned the actions of Wilkes were not merely beyond the pale but an active attempt to provoke them into a war.
ED: if it helps to get across how badly the Union had screwed up, this was considered an international matter (as it was, it was a matter of the Union violating what international law existed). There were expressions of support for the British sent by the French, Russians, Prussians and Austrians, and in hindsight it's not surprising because Royal Mail Ships were the global infrastructure of the time - they were how international communication took place, and had not yet been supplanted by the telegraph network.
Nobody else had anything like the same scale of mail ship network, and the British allowed everyone to use it - so the US declaring it can board a Royal Mail Ship, illegally, on a whim, and not need to justify itself? That's political black powder.
Eventually Earl Russell let Thurlow wander off into the garden with Lady Russell, and she reminded Weed, it is still England and people who want to keep their heads and careers don't argue with the Queen.
What on earth are you talking about? It wasn't the Queen who prevented war, it was Lincoln and Seward by conceding (on, I might add, the last day before the expiry of the ultimatum) and releasing the prisoners. They still didn't apologize, but the British were gracious enough to drop the matter there.