America, for a few days, passed through a spasm of exultation hard to understand, even by those who felt it, once the first emotion had subsided.

This had various causes, but among them is evident a quite childish fear of the acuteness and abilities of Mason and Slidell.

Both men were indeed persons of distinction in the politics of the previous decades.

Mason had always been open in his expressed antipathy to the North, especially to New England, had long been a leader in Virginia, and at the time of the Southern secession, was a United States Senator from that State.

Slidell, a Northerner by birth, but early removed to Louisiana, had acquired fortune in business there, and had for nearly twenty years been the political "boss" of one faction of the Democratic Party in New Orleans and in the State.