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In 1861 the Confederate Government sent John Slidell and J. M. Mason as commissioners to France and Great Britain respectively. They ran the blockade to Havana and embarked thence in the British merchant ship "Trent." November 8 the "Trent'' was stopped in the old Bahama channel by Captain Wilkes of the United States ship "San Jacinto." Mason and Slidell were seized and taken to Boston as prisoners. Wilkes' action was generally approved in the North; yet it involved a breach of international law, and Mason and Slidell were surrendered to Great Britain because its neutral rights had been transgressed, and to prevent the war which that country threatened.