Frustrating as McClellan’s conduct was, Lincoln found it even more frustrating to cope with a diplomatic crisis that threatened to lead to war with Great Britain. That autumn, the Confederate government decided to replace its three roving commissioners to Europe with two ministers plenipotentiary—former senators James M. Mason of Virginia (to England) and John Slidell of Louisiana (to France). In mid-October those two boarded a blockade runner that whisked them to Havana, where they transferred to the British mail packet Trent, bound for St. Thomas in the Danish Virgin Islands. There they intended to book passage for Europe. On November 8, Union Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the San Jacinto, rashly stopped the Trent in the Bahama Channel, boarded her, and seized Mason and Slidell as contraband, maintaining that they were in effect animate dispatches. He allowed the Trent to proceed on its way while he shipped the two would-be diplomats off to confinement at Fort Warren in Boston harbor.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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