Mr. Yancey of Mississippi
was the best-known of this first group of emissaries. With him was
associated Judge Mann of Virginia and it was Mann who in November, 1861,
was in charge of the London office of the Confederacy. In this month,
Mr. Davis appointed as successor to Mann, Mr. Mason of Virginia, to whom
was given a more formal authorisation of action. At the same time, Judge
Slidell of Louisiana was appointed as the representative to France.
Mason and Slidell made their way to Jamaica and sailed from Jamaica to
Liverpool in the British mail steamer _Trent_. Captain Charles Wilkes,
in the United States frigate _San Jacinto_, had been watching the West
Indies waters with reference to blockade runners and to Wilkes came
knowledge of the voyage of the two emissaries. Wilkes took the
responsibility of stopping the _Trent_ when she was a hundred miles or
more out of Kingston and of taking from her as prisoners the two
commissioners. The commissioners were brought to Boston and were there
kept under arrest awaiting the decision from Washington as to their
status. This stopping on the high seas of a British steamer brought out
a great flood of indignation in Great Britain. It gave to Palmerston and
Russell, who were at that time in charge of the government, the
opportunity for which they had been looking to place on the side of the
Confederacy the weight of the influence of Great Britain.
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