The two commissioners, their respective secretaries, and the family of
Mr. Slidell, passed uninterrupted through the blockade at
Charleston and at
Havana boarded her Britanic Majesty's mail ship
Trent, plying between
Vera Cruz, Mexico, and
Southampton.
Mr. Seward,
Secretary of State, had determined from the beginning of the war to bluff
England and alarm her ministry.
Among the first of his unrelaxing acts in this line was the capture of
Messrs. Mason and
Slidell under the
British flag on the high seas off the coast of
Cuba.
Seward held his finger firmly on the pulse of
Palmerston's timid government.
When the time came, he surrendered the commissioners to a British ship in the harbor of
Boston, and in February, 1862, they were landed at
Liverpool.
Early in February, 1862,
Mr. Mason delivered informally
Secretary Hunter's message to the
British ministry.
There was absolutely nothing in it beyond the stale argument
Yancey had left behind him, that secession was not revolution in the
American system, that
[
109]
the
Southern people were not in rebellion; that the success of the
South in the war was inevitable; that the
Southern people would never return to the
Union; that there were vast stores of cotton on the plantations, which an enterprising neutral could have for the asking.
In the retirement of his later years
President Davis recounted the success of the first commissioners, as he had anticipated success, in these words:
“Our efforts for recognition by
European powers, in 1861, served to make us better known, to awaken a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States which
Great Britain had recognized and her people knew to be our birthright.”
（
Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol.
I, p. 469.) This, after contemplation in fact, comprehended the whole scheme of Confederate foreign diplomacy from first to last.
