Note 611 — Chapter IX

Several accounts have been given of this episode. The two known to me treating it at greatest length are (1) Callahan, Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy and (2) Sears, A Confederate Diplomat at the Court of Napoleon III. Am. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1921. Both writers drew their information wholly from Confederate documents, using, especially, the private correspondence of Mason and Slidell, and neither treats the matter from the English view point. I have therefore based my account on the unused letters of British officials, citing other materials only where they offer a side light. The principal new sources are Cowley's private and official letters to Russell.