THE "TRENT" The _Trent_ affair seemed to Great Britain like the climax of American arrogance[399].

The Confederate agents sent to Europe at the outbreak of the Civil War had accomplished little, and after seven months of waiting for a more favourable turn in foreign relations, President Davis determined to replace them by two "Special Commissioners of the Confederate States of America." These were James M.Mason of Virginia, for Great Britain, and John Slidell of Louisiana, for France.

Their appointment indicated that the South had at last awakened to the need of a serious foreign policy.

It was publicly and widely commented on by the Southern press, thereby arousing an excited apprehension in the North, almost as if the mere sending of two new men with instructions to secure recognition abroad were tantamount to the actual accomplishment of their object.
Mason and Slidell succeeded in running the blockade at Charleston on the night of October 12, 1861, on the Confederate steamer _Theodora_[400], and arrived at New Providence, Nassau, on the fourteenth, thence proceeded by the same vessel to Cardenas, Cuba, and from that point journeyed overland to Havana, arriving October 22.

In the party there were, besides the two envoys, their secretaries, McFarland and Eustis, and the family of Slidell.