On this date 150 years ago, at Montgomery, Alabama, a convention of Southern representatives assembled. This was the initial meeting of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, attended by many former United States Senators, among them Louisiana's Judah Benjamin and John Slidell. Benjamin would later become Attoney General, then Secretary of war, in Jefferson Davis' cabinet. He and Slidell had been law partners together in New Orleans. Slidell would later become famous for his involvement in an international incident, the Trent affair.