THE MEMOIRS OF JAMES MURRAY MASON, CONFEDERATE COMMISSIONER TO ENGLAND.

Walter L. FLEMING, Professor of History, West Virginia University.

James M. Mason1 was born at his father's winter home in Georgetown, D. C., on November 3, 1798. He was one of the Virginia Masons descended from Colonel George Mason, a Cavalier officer who fled to Virginia after the death of Charles I. For two hundred years the Masons were prominent in Virginia politics. The subject of this memoir was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at William and Mary College, and read law in the office of a relative in Richmond. After admission to the bar he began to practice his profession in Winchester, and soon afterward, in 1822, he married Miss Eliza Chew of Philadelphia. His legal career was that of the average successful lawyer of the time. He made enough money at the practice of law to support his family after he entered politics.

From the early letters of himself and wife we learn that they lived the simple home life of the Virginians. There was no display, no luxury, and few servants, Mr. Mason never owning enough slaves for his own domestic service, though he always had several decrepit pensioners to support. The servants, kindly treated, were devoted to their master and his family. Mrs. Mason's letters show that the family life was beautiful, and also that the negro servants were fairly worthless. Whenever she wished anything well done

'The Public Life and Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason. With Some Personal History. By His Daughter [Miss Virginia Mason]. Cloth, Octavo, pp. IX+603. Price, $3.50. Roanoke, Virginia: The Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company. 1903.

she had to do it herself, and yet the responsibility of the mistress for the slaves was burdensome.

We search in vain through the Mason letters and documents for evidences of the ironclad social system that we are often told existed at that time in Virginia. Mrs. Mason's reading list, such as Boyle's Reflections, Knox's Philosophy of True Religion, The Power of Religion Over the Mind, and numerous histories, is an index to the reading of the cultured Southern woman of that period. The Masons read these books together, wrote many letters to kindred and friends and declared that they were perfectly happy. Mr. Mason never acquired any fondness for club life.

In politics Mr. Mason was a Jeffersonian Democrat and believed in the sovereignty of the States. In the State legislature and in Congress he was a strict constructionist from the first. He often voted against measures desired by his constituents and sometimes failed of reëlection, but sooner or later his course was approved by his people. Long before the slavery controversy became acute he was afraid of consolidation in the government. Consequently he opposed tariffs, internal improvements, etc., because they strengthened the central government at the expense of the States and robbed the agricultural South for the benefit of other sections. In Virginia he opposed slave representation in the legislature and in the congressional districts. Only the political people should be represented, he maintained. In 1832 during the Nullification troubles he declared that secession and separation rather than nullification was the proper remedy in case of extremity. In House and in Senate, Mason opposed the abolition agitation, and was singled out for especial vituperation by Charles Sumner. He demanded for the Southern States their rights under the constitution and protection for their institutions, believing that Southern society was based on domestic slavery and that it was necessary for the South to preserve its political power in order

to prevent a social revolution forced by outside influences. He had no faith in the assertion of the anti-slavery leaders that no interference within the States was intended. Consequently he opposed the various compromise measures in which the South continually yielded and became weaker.

For ten years, 1851-1861, Mr. Mason was chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations and in that position acquired a knowledge of diplomatic questions and methods that was useful to him when he became Confederate Commissioner. Like most Southerners he declared that Kossuth was an impostor and opposed the demonstrations in his favor during his visit to the United States. In 1857 Mason was invited to deliver an address at a Bunker Hill celebration. He pleased the New Englanders and was received by them with what Gideon Welles, in 1873, called "sycophantic adulation." In 1859 he was chairman of the special committee to investigate the raid of John Brown into Virginia at Harper's Ferry and with Jefferson Davis and G. N. Fitch presented the majority report. After the election of Lincoln by a sectional party Mason advocated secession as the only way of preventing a social revolution in the South. "It is a social war," he said "declared by the North, a war by one form of society against another distinct form of society." With the other Virginia congressmen he signed, in January, 1861, an address to the people of Virginia declaring that there was no hope of adjustment. When Virginia seceded Mason was sent as commissioner to Maryland and later chosen as a delegate to the Provisional Congress at Montgomery. He did not take his seat, however, until the Confederate government was removed to Richmond.

On August 29, 1861, Mason was appointed special commissioner to Great Britain, with plenipotentiary powers in case England recognized the Confederacy. He ran the blockade from Charleston, was well received in Cuba and in the British West Indies, and embarked on the British mail

ship, Trent, for England. Of the capture of himself and Mr. Slidell he wrote a full account, which is printed in his daughter's book. Mason was evidently pleased with his capture, for he knew that it would forward his plans in England and that England would demand his release. The United States Congress asked that he be put in a dungeon and treated as a felon, but in January, 1862, he was released and proceeded at once to England. His task there was to present the Confederate side in the questions arising out of the war, to persuade England to refuse to recognize the blockade of the Southern States declared by the Federals, and finally to secure the recognition of the Confederate States as an independent power, which it was generally believed, would end the war. He kept Richmond well informed of the state of affairs in Great Britain and Europe, sending frequent despatches in triplicate by different routes. Most of these reached their destination, sometimes after long delay. On several occasions in order to inform the Confederate government of affairs in Europe Mr. Mason had reports and despatches printed in English and in Northern newspapers which reached Richmond through the North before despatches could come through the regular channels.

Mason was never officially received by Earl Russell, the Prime Minister, but his correspondence with the latter shows that besides asking the English government to repudiate the Federal blockade, he presented a number of reasons why England should recognize the Confederate States. Some of these were the Confederacy had proven to be a strong government; England needed the cotton produced by the South, and the South needed quantities of English manufactures; by treaty England might get the carrying trade of the South, which had no merchant marine and which did not want to be economically dependent upon the North after the war; and finally recognition would prevent further bloody war. It is a mistaken belief that the English govern

..ent was in any way friendly to the Confederate States. It refused to recognize the Confederacy because it desired no war with the United States, and no alliance or understanding with France in regard to American affairs, because it wanted the United States weakened by war, and because it was unfriendly to slavery. From the beginning France was ready to recognize provided England would act also, but the English ministry treated the overtures of France with contempt. The English government paid no serious attention to the representations of the Confederacy. It was believed that the separation of the United States was permanent, but England had no intention of getting into trouble with the North and no intention of recognizing a slave state.

Among the English people, Mason reported that the feeling of the upper classes was friendly while the laboring classes, so far as they had any opinion, were in favor of the North. The middle classes were indifferent or inclined toward the South. The cotton manufacturers, who might have brought great influence to bear, were not, until 1863, in favor of recognition, because they had large stocks of cotton goods on hand which they had made when cotton was cheap and on which they were making great profits. Public opinion was on the whole, in favor of the South, though at the same time it was opposed to slavery. Confederate refugees were welcomed in England, ships were built for and supplies sent to the Confederates, blockade running encouraged, and numerous clubs favoring the Southern cause were formed, but the English people, because of slavery, would not force the ministry to recognize the Confederate States. Yet, as Mason's despatches show, the Emancipation Proclamation was not well received in England, being looked upon as an attempt to incite servile insurrection.

Mason found that his accounts of military condiitons in America were relied upon rather than the Northern ac