Chiefly diplomatic communications sent while Mason was Confederate commissioner. Includes correspondence; dispatches; lists of supplies for the Confederate States from London; statements and depositions regarding piracy, claims, the blockade, and other naval and marine matters; cotton bonds and warrants; circulars; and printed matter. Includes instructions to Mason from Confederate officials Judah P. Benjamin, William M. Browne, and R.M.T. Hunter as well as from the British Foreign Office and a 1862 log of the HMS Rinaldo (Sloop). Subjects include the Trent Affair, 1861; British merchant vessels; the actions of the CSS Virginia (Ironclad) at the Battle of Hampton Roads, Va., 1862; and Confederate ships in European waters.

Correspondents include William M. Browne; James Dunwody Bulloch; Alexander Collie; Henry Hotze; Caleb Huse; L.Q.C. Lamar; W.S. Lindsay; A. Dudley Mann; C.G. Memminger; James H. North; Charles O'Conor; John Russell, Earl Russell; George T. Sinclair; John Slidell; James Spence; James Williams; Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. (Liverpool, England); Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America (London, England); and Southern Independence Association, Manchester, Eng.