They say when it rains, it pours. And just when the United States was locked in a deadly struggle with the Confederacy, just when the military picture was at its bleakest, just when Abraham Lincoln's desk was piled highest, it looked very likely that Great Britain - the mightiest empire on the face of the Earth - would, for the third time in ninety years, wage war against us. Fortunately, it didn't happen. A conflict spanning the Atlantic was averted, and the U.S.-British war of 1861 became the war that never was.
By the fall of 1861, the Confederacy looked like it had a real chance to succeed. There had been victories at Ft. Sumter, at Bull Run, Big Bethel, Carthage, Wilson's Creek and Ball's Bluff, and more were in the offing. But Confederate President Jefferson Davis knew that if his new nation was to be assured of survival, powerful friends across the seas would be invaluable. He dispatched two diplomats, James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana, to be Confederate commissioners, or envoys. Mason and Slidell were to go to Britain and France, respectively. These were the military and economic superpowers of the day. Davis knew his history: French and Dutch help had been key to American success in the Revolution; now, perhaps, foreign assistance would help win Southern independence.
Mason and Slidell were originally to leave aboard the newly-refitted warship C.S.S. Nashville but, when the U.S. Navy got wind of the scheme and posted four warships to stop it, they left instead aboard a blockade runner and former privateer, the Gordon (also sometimes called the Theodora), on a $10,000 charter. They snuck out from Charleston harbor after 1 a.m. on October 12, 1861 under cover of a heavy downpour. Their mission was no secret, although when and how they'd leave Southern shores was supposed to be.
Five days later the Gordon put Mason and Slidell ashore at Cardenas, Cuba, and they took a train to Havana. The island of Cuba was at the time still part of the Spanish Empire, another European power remaining neutral in the Civil War but leaning a bit towards the Confederacy. In Havana, Mason and Slidell were wined and dined by the diplomatic community before transferring to a British mail steamer, the Trent, to continue their voyage to Europe.
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