itain, and John Slidell of Louisiana, for France. Their
appointment indicated that the South had at last awakened to the need of
a serious foreign policy. It was publicly and widely commented on by the
Southern press, thereby arousing an excited apprehension in the North,
almost as if the mere sending of two new men with instructions to secure
recognition abroad were tantamount to the actual accomplishment of
their object.

Mason and Slidell succeeded in running the blockade at Charleston on the
night of October 12, 1861, on the Confederate steamer _Theodora_[400],
and arrived at New Providence, Nassau, on the fourteenth, thence
proceeded by the same vessel to Cardenas, Cuba, and from that point
journeyed overland to Havana, arriving October 22. In the party there
were, besides the two envoys, their secretaries, McFarland and Eustis,
and the family of Slidell. On November 7 they sailed for the Danish
island of St. Thomas, expecting thence to take a British steamer for
Southampton. The vessel on which they left Havana was the British
contract mail-packet _Trent_, whose captain had full knowledge of the
diplomatic character of his passengers. About noon on November 8 the
_Trent_ was stopped in the Bahama Channel by the United States sloop of
war, _San Jacinto_, Captain Wilkes commanding, by a shot across the
bows, and a boarding party took from the _Trent_ Mason and Slidell with
their secretaries, transferred them to the _San Jacinto_, and proceeded
to an American port. Protest was made both by the captain of the _Trent_
and by Commander Williams, R.N., admiralty agent in charge of mails on
board the ship[401]. The two envoys also declared that they would yield
only to personal compulsion, whereupon hands were laid upon shoulders
and coat collars, and, accepting this as the application of _force_,
they were transferred to the _San Jacinto's_ boats. The scene on the
_Trent_, as described by all parties, both then and later, partakes of
the nature of comic opera, yet was serious enough to the participants.
In fact, the envoys, especially Slidell, were exultant in the conviction
that the action of Wilkes would inevitably result in the early
realization of the object of their journey--recognition of the South,
at least by Great Britain[402]. Once on board the _San Jacinto_ they
were treated more like guests on a private yacht, having "seats at the
captain's table," than as enemy prisoners on an American war-ship.

Captain Wi