Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/451

Rh to join with Great Britain in meeting the condition of things which imperiled those interests. Mr. Dayton, the new minister, was promptly instructed to protest against any, even unofficial, intercourse between Confederate agents and the French government, and to declare that the United States cannot be content with any concert among foreign nations to recognize the insurgents as a belligerent power.

The Confederate government had sent Major Caleb Huse to Europe to make contracts for the manufacture of arms, and Captain Semmes had also gone into the Northern markets to make purchases of munitions of war. A more formal effort to gain access to the governments of Europe was made in March by the appointment of three commissioners, William L. Yancey, P. A. Yost and A. Dudley Mann, who went without delay to England. Afterward two other ambassadors were appointed, James M. Mason and John Slidell, and eventually distribution of these eminent men among the foreign courts was made by sending Mr. Mason to England, Mr. Slidell to France, Mr. Yost to Spain, and Mr. Mann to Belgium. Mr. Yancey returned home and was elected to the Confederate Senate.

These representatives of the Confederacy abroad were all able and experienced statesmen. Mr. Yancey, a lawyer and political leader in Alabama, possessing the gift of remarkable eloquence, had often discharged positions of public trust Mr. Mason had become an experienced legislator in the House and Senate of the United States; Mr. Slidell, also a member of Congress from Louisiana, a minister to Mexico, and United States Senator, and Judge Yost, a distinguished jurist from the same State, were all competent to discharge the duties assigned to them. Mr. A. Dudley Mann had gained extensive diplomatic experience in negotiation of treaties with the German states, and as special commissioner to Switzerland in 1850. He was also the private secretary