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Our efforts for the recognition of the Confederate States by the European powers, in 1861, served to make us better known abroad, to awaken a kindly feeling in our favor, and cause a respectful regard for the effort we were making to maintain the independence of the States which Great Britain had recognized, and her people knew to be our birthright. On the 8th of November, 1861, an outrage was perpetrated by an armed vessel of the United States, in the forcible detention, on the high-seas, of a British mail steamer, making one of her regular trips from one British port to another, and the seizure, on that unarmed vessel, of our Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, who with their secretaries were bound for Europe on diplomatic service. The seizure was made by an armed force against the protest of the Captain of the vessel, and of Commander Williams, R.N., the latter speaking as the representative of her Majesty's Government. The Commissioners only yielded when force, which they could not resist, was used to remove them from the mail-steamer, and convey them to the United States vessel of war. This outrage was the more marked because the United States had been foremost in resisting the right of "visit and search," and had made it the cause of the War of 1812 with Great Britain.
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