This is to tell the story of what is known, in the history of the Civil War, as the Trent affair. And it is worth saying in advance that few, if any, events that have occurred on the high seas are of more interest to the American patriot than this. For not only did it involve the capture and subsequent release of two very important enemies of the American government in time of war; it settled forever in our favor the troublesome question that drove the American people into the War of 1812. There was, indeed, what may rightly be called an official declaration, on the part of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, that the United States was entirely justified in that war. [Illustration: James Murray Mason. John Slidell. The two captured commissioners.] On the 12th of October, 1861, Mr. James Mason, of Virginia, and Mr. John Slidell, of Louisiana, with two other gentlemen, acting as their secretaries, sailed from Charleston in the blockade-runner _Theodora_, and, “unimpeded by the blockading ships,” arrived at Cardenas, Cuba, whence they proceeded to Havana. Mr. Mason had, in former years, been chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and American Minister in Paris. Mr. Slidell had represented the United States at the capital of Mexico. These two gentlemen had been chosen by the Confederates to go to Europe as special representatives--Mr. Mason to England and Mr. Slidell to Paris--to secure, if possible, the recognition of the Confederate States as a nation. It is important to note that these special envoys were sent because three others previously sent had failed. “Lord Russell had received them (the three) on the footing of private gentlemen and listened to what they had to say, but had avoided correspondence, and remained immovable in his refusal to enter into any official communication. At the French court they had been equally unsuccessful,” and the Confederates hoped that Messrs. Mason and Slidell would do better. On the day that these Confederate envoys arrived in Havana the United States cruiser _San Jacinto_, Capt. Charles Wilkes, was at Cienfuegos, on the south side of Cuba, looking for the Confederate cruiser _Sumter_--Wilkes, by the way, being the officer who conducted the celebrated Wilkes expedition to the southern seas, of which mention is made elsewhere. [Illustration: Charles Wilkes. _From an engraving by Dodson of the portrait by Sully._]