Then all of a sudden, something that we did ourselves changed the undertone to a loud overtone, and we just grazed England's declaring war on us.

Had she done so, then indeed it had been all up with us.

This incident is the comic going-back on our own doctrine of 1812, to which I have alluded above.
On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the American steam sloop San Jacinto, fired a shot across the bow of the British vessel Trent, stopped her on the high seas, and took four passengers off her, and brought them prisoners to Fort Warren, in Boston harbor.

Mason and Slidell are the two we remember, Confederate envoys to France and Great Britain.

Over this the whole North burst into glorious joy.