John Slidell, appointed as Confederate commissioner to France, and James Murray Mason, appointed as commissioner to Great Britain, had sailed from Charleston on October 16, 1861. Slipping through the Union blockade, the party had reached Havana in Cuba and taken ship the day before aboard the British mail packet Trent. The U.S.S. San Jacinto, under Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the Trent and forcibly took off the commissioners and their secretaries, sparking a dangerous international incident. (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), 154.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
US/the World
