Commander Mackenzie had been acquitted by the authorities: he had been complimented by a body of eminent merchants: he had been applauded by the press: he had been encomiastically reviewed in a high literary periodical. The loud public voice was for him: but there was a small inward monitor, whose still and sinister whisperings went cutting through the soul. The acquitted and applauded man withdrew to a lonely retreat, oppressed with gloom and melancholly, visible only to a few, and was only roused from his depression to give signs of a diseased mind. It was five years after the event, and during the war with Mexico. The administration had conceived the idea of procuring peace through the instrumentality of Santa Anna—then an exile at Havana; and who was to be returned to his country upon some arrangement of the American government. This writer going to see the President (Mr. Polk) some day about this time, mentioned to him a visit from Commander Slidell Mackenzie to this exiled chief. The President was startled, and asked how this came to be known to me. I told him I read it in the Spanish newspapers. He said it was all a profound secret, confined to his cabinet. The case was this: a secret mission to Santa Anna was resolved upon: and the facile Mr. Buchanan, Secretary of State, dominated by the representative Slidell (brother to the commander), accepted this brother for the place. Now the views of the two parties were diametrically opposite. One wanted secrecy—the other notoriety. Restoration of Santa Anna to his country, upon an agreement, and without being seen in the transaction, was the object of the government; and that required secrecy: removal from under a cloud, restoration to public view, rehabilitation by some mark of public distinction, was the object of the Slidells; and that required notoriety: and the game being in their hands, they played it accordingly. Arriving at Havana, the secret minister put on the full uniform of an American naval officer, entered an open volante, and driving through the principal streets at high noon, proceeded to the suburban residence of the exiled dictator. Admitted to a private interview (for he spoke Spanish, learnt in Spain), the plumed and decorated officer made known his secret business. Santa Anna was amazed, but not disconcerted. He saw the folly and the danger of the proceeding, eschewed blunt overture, and got rid of his queer visitor in the shortest time, and the civilest phrases which Spanish decorum would admit. The repelled minister gone, Santa Anna called back his secretary, exclaiming as he entered—"Porque el Presidente me ha enviado este tonto?" (Why has the President sent me this fool?) It was not until afterwards, and through the instrumentality of a sounder head, that the mode of the dictator's return was arranged: and the folly which Mackenzie exhibited on this occasion was of a piece with his crazy and preposterous conceptions on board the Somers.

Fourteen years have elapsed since this tragedy of the Somers. The chief in that black and bloody drama (unless Wales is to be considered the master-spirit, and the commander and lieutenant only his instruments) has gone to his long account. Some others, concerned with him, have passed away. The vessel itself, bearing a name illustrious in the navy annals, has gone to the bottom of the sea—foundering—and going down with all on board; the circling waves closing over the heads of the doomed mass, and hiding all from the light of Heaven before they were dead. And the mind of seamen, prone to belief in portents, prodigies, signs and judgments, refer the hapless fate of the vessel to the innocent blood which had been shed upon her.

History feels it to be a debt of duty to examine this transaction to the bottom, and to judge it closely—not with a view to affect individuals, but to relieve national character from a foul imputation. It was the crime of individuals: it was made national. The protection of the government, the lenity of the court, the evasions of the judiciary, and the general approving voice, made a nation's offence out of the conduct of some individuals, and brought reproach upon the American name. All Christendom recoiled with horror from the atrocious deed: all friends to America beheld with grief and amazement the national assumption of such a crime. Cotemporary with the event, and its close observer, the writer of this View finds confirmed now, upon the fullest examination, the severe judgment which he formed upon it at the time.

The naval historian, Fenimore Cooper (who himself had been a naval officer), wrote a clear exposure of all the delusion, falsehood, and wickedness of this imputed mutiny, and of the mockery of the court-martial trial of Mackenzie: but unavailing in the then condition of the public mind, and impotent against the vast machinery of the public press which was brought to bear on the dead. From that publication, and the official record of the trial, this view of the transaction is made up.