James Murray Mason and the 1861 Trent Affair

On November 8, 1861, Confederate Commissioner James Murray Mason of Virginia was seized from the British mail steamer RMS Trent by the USS San Jacinto, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes—great-nephew of John Wilkes, namesake of Alexandria’s Wilkes Street and the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex. The incident nearly provoked war between the United States and Great Britain.

Engraving of the USS San Jacinto intercepting the RMS Trent on November 8, 1861, during the Trent Affair, when Confederate diplomats James Murray Mason and John Slidell were seized at sea. — Engraving depicting the seizure of Confederate commissioners James Murray Mason and John Slidell from the British mail steamer Trent by the USS San Jacinto—an act that nearly drew Great Britain into the Civil War. Image courtesy of the British Library, Public Domain.

A decade earlier, Mason authored the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, one of the most controversial laws of the pre–Civil War era. After the war, he fled to Canada but later returned to Virginia under President Andrew Johnson’s 1868 amnesty.

Mason is buried in Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery, part of the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex, where his story still echoes through Alexandria’s history.