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One met a minister here, and a Senator there, and anon some wise diplomatic functionary. By none of these grave men would any secret be divulged; none of them had any secret ready for divulging. But it was to be read in every look of the eye, in every touch of the hand, and in every fall of the foot of each of them, that Mason and Slidell would go to England.
"Dear Pisgah," read the text, "I am here at claim of restaurateur; shall die to-morrow at or before twelve o'clock, if Andy Plade don't fork over my subscription of two hundred francs. Andy Plade damned knave no mistake! No living soul been to see me, except letter from Hon. Mr. Slidell. He has got sixteen thousand dollars in specie for Simp. Where's Simp, dogorn him! Hon.
In the month of November, 1861, while in command of the steamer San Jacinto, he stopped the British ship Trent and forcibly took off the two Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who were on their way respectively to England and France to secure their aid for the Southern Confederacy. Captain Wilkes was highly applauded for his act by his countrymen, but England was very indignant.
There was one from Jefferson Davis, himself, another from the astute Benjamin, another from Toombs, bold and brusque as befitted his temperament, and yet more from Stephens and Slidell and Yancey and others. Colonel Kenton read them one by one to the twenty men who were crowded into the room. They were appealing, insistent, urgent. Their tone might vary, but the tenor was the same.
Among the Kentuckians were the gallant John C. Breckinridge, the pugnacious Charles A. Wickliffe, J. W. Stevenson, and T. C. McCreery, afterward Governors and Senators, and the courteous William C. Preston, afterward Minister to Spain. From Louisiana were Senators Slidell and Benjamin, prominently connected with the Rebellion a few years later, and Pierre Soulé.
Mason and Slidell, by Commodore Wilkes, on board the British mail steamer Trent, produced a crisis in the relations between Great Britain and the United States which seemed likely to lead to a war, and greatly strengthened the position of the delegates, who were able to point out the difficulty involved in defending Canada without a railway to the sea.
"Ye-s? So 'ud Bishop Polk say. Got a different Lord down thar? 'S likely. Henry Wise used to talk of the 'God of Virginia." "Was a fellow," said Nabbes, nursing one foot, "that set me easy about my soul, and the thing. A chaplain in Congress: after we took down that bitter Mason and Slidell pill, it was.
He remarked that his sympathies were entirely with the South but added that, if he acted alone, England might trip him up. He spoke of his scheme for joint intervention by England, France, and Russia. Then he asked why we had not created a navy. Slidell snapped at the bait.
'And if the Devil come and roar for them, We will not send them." The result would have been most disastrous, for in order to secure a most trifling advantage, that of keeping Mason and Slidell at Fort Warren a little longer, we should have turned our backs on all the principles maintained by us when neutral, and should have been obliged to accept a war at an enormous disadvantage. . . .
Slidell, the shrewd Confederate commissioner to France, led the Emperor to expect Southern support of his scheme, and at the same time borrowed millions of dollars in gold from rich Paris bankers and hurried it off to the famishing Confederacy. No revolutionary power ever had a fairer chance of winning its goal than did that of Davis and Lee in the autumn of 1862 and winter of 1863.
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