has solemnly disclaimed any purpose to impose
on Mexico a form of government not acceptable to the nation...." In
January, 1864, hope of recognition through support of Napoleon's Mexican
policy moved the Confederate Congress to adopt resolutions providing for
a Minister to the Mexican Empire and giving him instructions with regard
to a presumptive treaty. To the new post Davis appointed General William
Preston.

But what, while hope was springing high in America, was taking place in
France? So far as the world could say, there was little if anything to
disturb the Confederates; and yet, on the horizon, a cloud the size of
a man's hand had appeared. M. Arman had turned to another member of the
Legislative Assembly, a sound Bonapartist like himself, M. Voruz, of
Nantes, to whom he had sublet a part of the Confederate contract. The
truth about the ships and their destination thus became part of the
archives of the Voruz firm. No phase of Napoleonic intrigue could go
very far without encountering dishonesty, and to the confidential
clerk of M. Voruz there occurred the bright idea of doing something
for himself with this valuable diplomatic information. One fine day
the clerk was missing and with him certain papers. Then there ensued a
period of months during which the firm and their employers could only
conjecture the full extent of their loss.

In reality, from the Confederate point of view, everything was lost.
Again the episode becomes too complex to be followed in detail. Suffice
it to say that the papers were sold to the United States; that the
secret was exposed; that the United States made a determined assault
upon the Imperial Government. In the midst of this entanglement, Slidell
lost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its end
is a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sent
to the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could not
have appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinates
might play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire by
speaking of the ships as "now being constructed at Bordeaux and Nantes
for the government of the Confederate States" and virtually claimed of
Napoleon a promise to let them go to sea. Three days later the Minister
of Foreign Affairs took him sharply to task because of this note,
reminding him that "what had passed with the Emperor was confidential"
and dropping the significant hint that F