Confederate commissioners James Murray Mason and John Slidell had left Charleston on October 16, 1861 but had been taken, with their secretaries, by force from the British mail ship Trent off Cuba on November 8, 1861. While the international incident this precipitated played out, the four had been held at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. On January 1, 1862 they were released to the the British warship Rinaldo. They resumed their journey at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and arrived in Southampton where they were reunited with their families. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War in the United States of America (Hartford, CT: T. Belnap, 1874), 164.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
US/the World
