lkes had acted without orders, and, indeed, even without any
recent official information from Washington. He was returning from a
cruise off the African coast, and had reached St. Thomas on October 10.
A few days later, when off the south coat of Cuba, he had learned of the
Confederate appointment of Mason and Slidell, and on the twenty-eighth,
in Havana harbour, he heard that the Commissioners were to sail on the
_Trent_. At once he conceived the idea of intercepting the _Trent_,
exercising the right of search, and seizing the envoys, in spite of the
alleged objections of his executive officer, Lieutenant Fairfax. The
result was that quite without authority from the United States Navy
Department, and solely upon his own responsibility, a challenge was
addressed to Britain, the "mistress of the seas," certain to be accepted
by that nation as an insult to national prestige and national pride not
quietly to be suffered.

The _San Jacinto_ reached Fortress Monroe on the evening of November 15.
The next day the news was known, but since it was Saturday, few papers
contained more than brief and inaccurate accounts and, there being then
few Sunday papers, it was not until Monday, the eighteenth, that there
broke out a widespread rejoicing and glorification in the Northern
press[403]. America, for a few days, passed through a spasm of
exultation hard to understand, even by those who felt it, once the first
emotion had subsided. This had various causes, but among them is evident
a quite childish fear of the acuteness and abilities of Mason and
Slidell. Both men were indeed persons of distinction in the politics of
the previous decades. Mason had always been open in his expressed
antipathy to the North, especially to New England, had long been a
leader in Virginia, and at the time of the Southern secession, was a
United States Senator from that State. Slidell, a Northerner by birth,
but early removed to Louisiana, had acquired fortune in business there,
and had for nearly twenty years been the political "boss" of one faction
of the Democratic Party in New Orleans and in the State. With much
previous experience in diplomacy, especially that requiring intrigue and
indirect methods (as in the preliminaries of the Mexican War), and
having held his seat in the United States Senate until the withdrawal of
Louisiana from the Union, he was, of the two men, more feared and more
detested, but both were thoroughly obnoxious to the North. Me