In November, 1861, occurred an incident which for a time threatened a very grave international complication, a complication that would, if unwisely handled, have determined the fate of the Republic.  Early in the year, the Confederate government had sent certain representatives across the Atlantic to do what might be practicable to enlist the sympathies of European governments, or of individuals in these governments, to make a market for the Confederate cotton bonds, to arrange for the purchase of supplies for the army and navy, and to secure the circulation of documents presenting the case of the South.  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.  It strengthened the hopes of Louis Napoleon for carrying out, in conjunction with Great Britain, a scheme that he had formulated under which France was to secure a western empire in Mexico, leaving England to do what she might find convenient in the adjustment of the affairs of the so-called United States.

The first report secured from the law officers of the Crown took the ground that the capture was legal under international law and under the practice of Great Britain itself.  This report was, however, pushed to one side, and Palmerston drafted a demand for the immediate surrender of the commissioners.  This demand was so worded that a self-respecting government would have had great difficulty in assenting to it without risk of forfeiting support with its own citizens.  It was in fact intended to bring about a state of war.  Under the wise influence of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria refused to give her approval to the document.  It was reworded by Albert in such fashion