3-008-362 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mr. Yancey, one of the commissioners from the Confederate States of America to the European Courts, 1862. Portrait from a photograph by Mayall. 'Mr. Yancey's chief claim to public notice rests in his early recognition of the ineradicable differences existing between the North and South [USA], and which time, instead of diminishing, extended and strengthened...he predicted that the Union would be dissolved whenever they stood arrayed as sections, the one against the other...In selecting three gentlemen to form a commission to the Powers of Europe to present the claims of the Confederate States to recognition and friendly commercial relations, President Davis considered it an occasion to recognise the long persistent services of Mr. Yancey in the cause of the South; and, as he had been the first to urge and obtain the consent of the South to secede and form an independent Confederacy, it was felt that he should be the first in a commission to obtain recognition of the new Power from the elder nations of the earth, and especially from Great Britain and France. Hence Mr. Yancey was appointed to be the senior or chief of the commission to Europe, and has been in this country and in France in that capacity since May last'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.