Also in November 1861, the "Trent" affair—the forcible removal of Confederate envoys from a British ship by Union forces during the American Civil War—threatened war between the United States and Britain. The British government prepared an ultimatum and readied a military response. Albert was gravely ill but intervened to defuse the crisis. In a few hours, he revised the British demands in a manner that allowed the Lincoln administration to surrender the Confederate commissioners who had been seized from the "Trent" and to issue a public apology to London without losing face. The key idea, based on a suggestion from "The Times", was to give Washington the opportunity to deny it had officially authorised the seizure and thereby apologise for the captain's mistake.