CHAPTER XI

HIS PART IN THE CIVIL WAR: IN VIRGINIA

Maury resigned from the naval service and left the National Observatory on April 20, 1861. He declared that he worked as hard and as faithfully for Uncle Sam up to three o’clock of that day as he had ever done, and at that hour turned over all the public property and records of the office to Lieutenant Whiting, the officer who was next in authority. He left the Observatory with the deepest regret. “Its associations”, he wrote, “the treasures there, which, with your help and that of thousands of other friendly hands, had been collected from the sea, were precious to me and as I turned my back upon the place a tear furrowed my cheek, for I could not but recollect that such things were”.

From Richmond, on April 26th, he wrote to Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, who had requested to know his reasons for his resignation, the following reply: “I am not aware of any law or rule that requires an officer tendering resignation to give reasons therefor. In this case, however, I have no objections to state them. They are these: our once glorious Union is gone; the state through which and for which I confessed allegiance to the Federal government has no longer any lot or part in it. Neither have I. I desire to go with my own people and with them to share the fortunes of our own state together. Such are the reasons for tendering my resignation, and I hope the President will consider them satisfactory”. Maury afterwards stated in detail the reasons for his resignation in his “A Vindication of Virginia and the South”, which was the last thing that he prepared for the press, in May, 1871. This statement, which must be read as a whole in order to get the full force of his arguments, is much too long to quote here; but it is sufficient to say that his action was prompted by the same feelings and motives that inspired Lee and the dozens of other officers in both army and navy who went with their respective states when secession was decided upon. Furthermore, as will be seen later, in Maury’s case the sacrifices involved were perhaps greater than those suffered by any other man who cast his lot with the South.

But, strangely, from the very beginning of the Civil War Maury’s name was singled out for special condemnation, and many false statements were made about him and his work. He was accused of carrying on treasonable correspondence with the enemy before he resigned from the service, and of having the buoys removed from the Kettle Bottom Shoals and of taking away with him from the Observatory the maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. His astronomical and meteorological work was ridiculously depreciated, and toward the close of the war the National Academy of Sciences went so far as to pass on January 9, 1864 this resolution: “Resolved by the National Academy of Sciences, That in the opinion of this Academy the volumes entitled ‘Sailing Directions’, heretofore issued to navigators from the Naval Observatory, and the wind and current charts which they are designed to illustrate and explain, embrace much which is unsound in philosophy and little that is practically useful, and that therefore these publications ought no longer to be issued in their present form”. Among all the injuries which Maury suffered from casting his fortunes with Virginia and the South, these hostile condemnations by former fellow officers and scientists, made in the midst of the animosities of civil strife, were perhaps the most damaging, for they cast a cloud upon his good name and the fame which he had won in the field of oceanography,—a cloud of misrepresentation which after more than half a century has not been entirely removed.

Upon Maury’s arrival at Richmond, he lost no time in offering his services to Governor Letcher, who granted him a commission as commander in the Navy of Virginia, dated April 23, 1861. At about the same time he appointed him a member of his Executive Council, only just authorized by an ordinance of April 20. Its other members were: Honorable John J. Allen, President of the Court of Appeals; Colonel Francis H. Smith, Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute; R. L. Montague; and Thomas S. Haymond. This council, ordered to devise plans for the arming and protecting of the state in the shortest time possible, continued to function until June 19 of the same year, when its manuscript minutes come abruptly to a close. On April 25, Virginia had joined the Confederate States and adopted their provisional government; and on April 29 Richmond had become the Capital of the Confederacy. The Virginia State Navy was then incorporated with that of the Confederacy, and on June 10 Maury received his commission in the Confederate States Navy.

On the following day Maury wrote, “I begin to feel very useless. I am afraid there is too much red tape yet left in the world. I hope it may not tie us down”. After remarking that there were small men in the Confederate government, and that there had been conflicts between Virginia authority and that of the Confederacy, he continued, “Davis, it appears to me, is grasping after patronage. Don’t think he likes Lee. Lee told me yesterday he did not know where he was. Nor do I. I can see though how that may have proceeded from an honest misunderstanding. But it’s bad in times like this to so jar your general that he does not know whether he is in or out of power.... Where the wrong is I am not so clear, but the biggest promotions seem to be on the other side. You may rely upon it, the Confederate States government has come here feeling that there is between it and us something of antagonism”. Maury had reason to feel uncertain as to his standing, for Davis had been unfriendly to him when he was seeking vindication for the unjust action of the Retiring Board, and his strongest opponent at that time had been Mallory, then Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and later Secretary of the Navy in the Confederate government. Besides, among the naval officers whom Maury had affronted during that unpleasant controversy was Buchanan, who had become the officer of highest rank in the Confederate Navy.

Maury had the affairs of his family on his mind also, and he was particularly concerned over his wife who had been made ill by the shock incident to the sudden outbreak of the war and the breaking up of her home in Washington. She and her younger children had, through the kindness of a cousin, John Minor, been taken into his home in Fredericksburg, a handsome brick house with a lovely garden, which still stands at 214 Main Street much as it appeared when the refugees occupied it. Here came also Maury’s two married daughters with their children, Mrs. W. A. Maury with her one child from Washington, and Mrs. Corbin with her two children from her country place which was so near the Potomac that it soon fell into the hands of the Federals. His sons-in-law and his two eldest sons had early entered the Confederate army. His mind was greatly disturbed also because of his financial investments in the North, which had been made through his cousin Rutson Maury of New York and his friend Hasbrouck of Newburgh, New York. The latter remained a true friend in spite of the war, and at Maury’s request was able to save a small part of his investments. Their relation, as effected by the war, is an example of the many that existed of like nature, and its peculiar poignancy is indicated in this letter: “The nefarious Civil War that rages has not and I trust never may cool our hearts towards you and your dear family. My son Henry is an officer in the army of the North, he could not with honor decline to serve in it. Your son Richard is an officer in the army of the South, as you informed me in one of your letters, and could not probably with honor decline to serve in it. I sincerely hope that Henry and Richard may never meet in any battle during this unhappy war, and by duty and honor be obliged to shed each other’s blood”.

Maury, however, did not allow separation from his family and depression of spirits to interfere with the performance of what he considered his duty, but made an enthusiastic endeavor to make the most possible out of conditions as he found them. He first assisted in fortifying Jamestown Island in the James River and Gloucester Point on the York River, early in May, 1861, for the defense of Richmond. Besides he sat almost daily with the Governor’s Executive Council to consider the many problems which confronted the State in her time of great need. In the summer of 1861 he was appointed Chief of the “Naval Bureau of Coast, Harbor, and River Defense”, and began to plan the construction of submarine mines to be placed in the rivers and harbors of the South. These were to be exploded under enemy ships by electricity, and insulated wire was needed for this purpose. He accordingly sent a Richmond merchant to New York to secure a large quantity of such wire. The merchant failed in his mission, but Maury undismayed set about devising mines which could be exploded in a different way. Each mine consisted of an oak cask filled with 200 pounds of powder, in the head of which was a trigger attached to a fuse. The casks were joined together in pairs by 500 feet of rope, and when in a favorable position were let go to be carried by the tide down upon an enemy ship in such a way as to have the rope catch across the cable of the vessel. As the mines drifted near the ship, the strain on the rope would release the triggers, ignite the fuses, and explode the mines.

Early in July, 1861, Maury himself commanded an expedition from Sewell’s Point near Norfolk, which made an attempt to destroy the Union vessels _Minnesota_, _Roanoke_, and _Cumberland_, then off Fortress Monroe. The attacking party in five boats set off about ten o’clock. Maury was in the first boat with the pilot and four oarsmen; while each of the others carried an officer and four men, together with one of the mines. It was a very quiet Sunday evening, and as the enemy had no guard boats, the attacking party was able, under muffled oars, to take up a position near enough for their purpose just as seven bells struck on board the intended victims. The mines were immediately set adrift, and the boats rowed away. But no explosions followed, for something had gone wrong with the mechanism of the mines. Afterwards it was found that the type of fuse which had been used would not burn in a pressure of twenty feet of water, the depth at which the mines had been floated. Later, the torpedoes, as they were then called, were discovered by the Federals, taken out of the water, and carried away as relics.

Maury was not overly discouraged, but returned to Richmond to continue his experiments so as to perfect an apparatus which would be more successful next time. These experiments were made possible through the assistance of the Richmond Medical College, which furnished batteries and offered the use of its laboratory, and by the help of the Tredegar Iron Works as well as those of Talbot and Son. Maury carried on these experiments at the house of his cousin Robert H. Maury in Richmond at 1105 East Clay Street, which was marked in 1910 by the Confederate Memorial Society with this commemorative inscription: “In this house, Matthew Fontaine Maury, LL. D., U. S. N., C. S. N., invented the submarine Electrical Torpedo, 1861–62”.

While engaged in this work, Maury set forth his hopes of success in the following letter: “I am experimenting upon my deep sea batteries and so far, as difficulties have presented themselves, they have one by one been overcome. I shall be ready for demonstration next week I hope.... Then if I can get the powder, I will launch in the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and its tributaries hundreds of these things in pairs, each pair connected by a line several hundred feet in length and in such a manner that if the line fouls the vessel while she is at anchor, or any vessel crosses the line while she is under weigh, the tightening of the line will pull a trigger and let the things off. I think I can drive the enemy out of the Chesapeake. This is a business, this thing of blowing up men while they are asleep, that I don’t glory in.... I shall endeavor to pick up and save the crews from drowning”.

Maury was not given an opportunity to demonstrate his improved mine, until late in July or early in August, 1861, when the Secretary of the Navy, the Governor of Virginia, and the Chairman of the Committee of Naval Affairs consented to witness a trial on the James River at Rocketts, where the James River Steamboat Company’s wharf is now located. Maury thus describes the trial: “I made a pair of submarine batteries. Your man Mallory pronounced them humbugs. I got him and Conrad (Chairman of Naval Affairs Committee, House of Representatives) to go and see them blow up the James River. I put them adrift aiming them at a buoy. They caught, drifted down, tightened the rope, pulled the trigger, and off they went blowing the river, or some of it, sky high and killing innumerable fish. So Mallory after that asked for an appropriation of $50,000 to enable me to go ahead”.

This money was not, however, immediately forthcoming, and Maury complained that he was forced to lay on his oars and wait for the word from Congress, “Go ahead!” He also wrote that he was anxious to mine the river passes to both Richmond and Fredericksburg with these submarine batteries which would be exploded by electricity, but that lack of materials was delaying the project. During this delay, he planned another attack on the Union ships off Newport News. This materialized in an attempt which was made, on October 10, by Lieutenant Robert D. Minor to sink the _Savannah_ and the _Minnesota_, but this second trial also met with failure. Maury had planned to take part himself in the attack, but was prevented from doing so by his being ordered to Richmond with the expectation of being sent to mine the Mississippi River. He did not, however, go on this mission, though he had considerable correspondence with General Polk, who wished to place mines in the river at Columbus, Kentucky. Some mines were sent to Memphis with full instructions as to how they should be planted; and here others were constructed, after Maury’s model, to be used elsewhere on the river.

About the first of May, 1862, Maury had the good fortune to secure ten miles of insulated wire which enabled him to mine the James River with electric mines, according to the plans which he had been compelled to lay aside for several months for lack of material. This wire had been used by the Federals in attempting to lay a submarine telegraph across the Chesapeake from Fortress Monroe to Eastville; but having been forced to abandon the attempt, they left the wire in the water and the waves cast it upon the beach near Norfolk where a friend, Dr. Morris, secured it for Maury’s use.

The following report describes the mines that were then constructed and relates how they were laid down in the James River early in June, 1862: “The James River is mined with fifteen tanks below the iron battery at Chapin’s (Chaffin’s) Bluff. They are to be exploded by means of electricity. Four of the tanks contain 160 pounds of powder; the eleven others hold 70 pounds each. All are made of boiler plate. They are arranged in rows as per diagram, those of each row being 30 feet apart. Each tank is contained in a water-tight wooden cask, capable of floating it but anchored and held below the surface from three to eight feet, according to the state of the tide. The anchors of each are an 18-inch shell and a piece of kentledge, so placed as to prevent the barrels from fouling the buoy ropes at the change of the tide. Each shell of a row is connected with the one next to it by a stout rope thirty feet long and capable of lifting it in case the cask be carried away. The casks are water-tight, as are also the tanks, the electric cord entering through the same head.

“The wire for the return current from the battery is passed from shell to shell and along the connecting rope, which lies at the bottom. The wire that passes from cask to cask is stopped slack to the buoy rope from the shell up to the cask, to which it is securely seized to prevent any strain upon that part which enters the cask. The return wire is stopped in like manner down along the span to the next shell, as per the rough sketch. At 4 (in the sketch) the two cords are frapped together, loaded with trace chains a fathom apart, and carried ashore to the galvanic battery.

“For batteries we have 21 Wollastons, each trough containing eighteen pairs of plates, zinc and iron, ten by twelve inches. The first range is called 1, the second 2, and the third 3, and the wires are so labeled. Thus all of each range are exploded at once.

“Besides these, there are two ranges of two tanks each, planted opposite the battery at Chapin’s Bluff. When they were planted, it was not known that a battery was to be erected below. These four tanks contain about 6,000 pounds of powder. The great freshet of last month carried away the wires that were to operate the first pair, ‘A’ (in a diagram enclosed, which showed the exact location of the various mines).

“Lieutenant Davidson, who with the _Teaser_ and her crew has assisted me with a most hearty good will, has dragged for the tanks without success. They rest on the bottom. Could they be found, it was my intention to raise the four, examine them, and, if found in good order, place them below the range, ‘I’.

“Lieutenant William L. Maury, assisted by Acting Master W. F. Carter and R. Rollins, was charged with the duty of proving the tanks and packing them in casks. There are eleven others, each containing 70 pounds of powder. When tested in the barrels and found ready for use, they will be held in reserve in case of accident to those already down. A larger number was not prepared, for the want of powder. There are a quantity of admirable insulated wire, a number of shells for anchors or torpedoes, and a sufficient quantity of chains for the wires remaining. They will be put in the navy store for safe-keeping. The galvanic batteries; viz., 21 Wollastons and 1 Cruikshank, the latter loaned by Dr. Maupin of the University of Virginia, with spare acids, sulphuric and nitric, are at Chapin’s Bluff in charge of Acting Master Cheeney. He has also in jugs a sufficient quantity mixed to work the batteries, and ready to be poured in for use.

“It is proper that I should mention to the Department in terms of commendation the ready and valuable assistance afforded by Dr. Morris, president telegraph company, and his assistant, especially by Mr. Goldwell. My duties in connection with these batteries being thus closed, I have the honor to await your further orders”.

Maury was relieved, on the 20th of June, 1862, by Lieutenant Hunter Davidson of the duty of “devising, placing, and superintending submarine batteries in the James River”. Davidson was at the time in command of the _Teaser_, and to signalize his new appointment, he had the misfortune, on July 4, of losing his ship to the enemy, together with the diagrams showing the exact position of the mines already laid down.

Although Maury’s participation in this new field of warfare had extended over only a little more than the first year of the war, still his pioneer work therein deserves high consideration as it laid the foundation for experiments by other Confederate officers, and these mines, electric and otherwise, resulted in the loss during the war of a large number of Union ships, varying from 20 to 58 according to different authorities. These facts bear out the following claim made by Maury: “All the electrical torpedoes in that (James) river were prepared and laid down either by myself or by Lieutenant Davidson who relieved me after having been instructed by me as to the details of the system. These were the first electrical torpedoes that were successfully used against an enemy in war”.

Maury did not pretend that the idea was original with him. Robert Fulton had had a device for firing a mine by electricity, but had never succeeded in making his battery work. Also Colonel Colt experimented with some success with such mines as early as 1842. Maury’s work was so important because he was the first to demonstrate that such weapons could be made of practical use in warfare. He has, however, been given almost no credit, until recently, for this pioneer work. Even Jefferson Davis, in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government”, makes no mention of Maury’s name in connection with the electric mines, but gives all the honor to General Gabriel J. Rains, who did not become head of the Torpedo Bureau until October, 1862. Scharf’s “History of the Confederate States Navy” names not only Rains but also Hunter Davidson and Beverly Kennon as rivals for priority in the invention and practical use of the electric mine. The claims of the first two are so extravagant and so unjust to Maury as to merit no consideration; while those of Kennon cannot be successfully sustained in comparison with the well-established priority of Maury’s “electrical torpedoes”.

These electric mines were not the only new naval weapons that Maury advocated and had a hand in devising. In the autumn of 1861, he wrote a series of articles for the Richmond _Enquirer_ under the pseudonym of “Ben Bow”, in which he urged the necessity of building a strong navy for the South without delay, and of providing, at least, for the protection of bays and rivers by the construction of small ships armed with big guns. Maury had had in mind such a fighting craft for years, and as early as 1841 he had urged the building of ships of this sort in his “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”.

In these “Ben Bow” articles he called attention to the fact that the Confederate government had not as yet realized the need for a navy. “The sums appropriated by the Government”, he wrote, “for _building and increase_ will indicate its policy touching a navy, and show what, for the present, is proposed to be done. Two Navy Bills have passed since Virginia seceded and joined the Confederacy. One was passed in May at Montgomery, and the other in Richmond in August. In the Montgomery Bill there is not one dime for construction or increase. The whole appropriation is $278,500, of which $100,000 is for equipment and repairs. Now a navy without vessels is like lamps without oil. The Richmond Bill gives $50,000 to buy and build steamers and gunboats for coast defense, and $160,000 for two ironclad gunboats for the defense of the Mississippi River and the city of Memphis.... We may safely infer that $50,000 will neither purchase nor build a great many steamers or gunboats, nor enable us to provide very efficiently for the defense of all the rivers except the Mississippi, and of all the harbors, bays, creeks, and sounds of our coast all the way from Washington on the Potomac to Brownsville on the Rio Grande. Thus we perceive that since Virginia and North Carolina, with their defenseless, open, and inviting sea-front, seceded, the sum of only $50,000 has been voted towards the ‘purchase or construction’ of a navy, for the defense of the entire seacoast of the Confederacy! From this analysis, and from all that we can see doing on the water, it appears that the Government has not yet decided to have a navy”.

It was a mistake, he thought, to believe that there was a magic power in cotton, that “Cotton is King” and could do all and more than it was possible for a navy to accomplish. Along this line, he declared, “There seems to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of certain people, and because we are the chief growers of cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce obedience to our revenue laws at home and secure respect to our citizens abroad. But can we? Did ever unprotected wealth secure immunity to its owner? In the first place, cotton becomes, when handled in any other way than the regular commercial way, a two-edged sword, as apt to wound producer as consumer. Every obstacle, which we place between it and the channels of commerce here, operates as a bounty for its production elsewhere. It is a very current but mistaken idea to suppose that this is the only country in the world properly adapted to the cultivation of cotton. No such thing. Should even the present paper blockade continue for a few years, and cotton rule at the present New York prices of 22 cents, or even at 15 cents, our political dreamers may wake up and find the cotton scepter, if not entirely lost to our hold, at least divided in our hand.... Suppose England and France do not choose for a few months to come to break this paper blockade, which we have not the naval strength to force, paper though it be, does it follow that that blockade, weak and ineffectual as, up to this time, it has notoriously been, will continue so until those nations get ready to act? The amount appropriated for the Lincoln navy during the current year is upwards of $40,000,000.... We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of the Confederacy put together, adopt any course which will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a navy”.

Then followed his statement as to the kind of war vessels that were needed to give the Confederacy command, at least, of its own waters, and at an expense of no more than three million dollars. “In this change of circumstances”, he wrote, “it so happens that the navy which we most require is for smooth water and shallow places. Such a one, consisting of small vessels, can be quickly and cheaply built. We want at once a navy for our rivers and creeks and bays and sounds; a navy consisting chiefly of vessels that, for the most part, will only be required to keep the sea for a few days at a time.” These ships would be so small as to present little more than a feather-edge as a target to the enemy, and therefore be more invulnerable than the best shot-proof men-of-war. They would be not more than twenty or twenty-five feet broad, and with coal, crew, and guns aboard would float only two or three feet above the surface of the water. They were, in fact, to be really nothing but floating gun carriages, propelled by steam, and each was to carry two rifled cannon of the largest caliber. Such a ship would be able to engage, at long range, one of the largest ships of the Union navy, the _Minnesota_, for example; and in attacking head on, she would present a target of but forty square feet as compared with one of six thousand square feet of the _Minnesota_. This, at a distance of two or three miles, would be a great advantage to the smaller vessel. Maury claimed for this type of ship facility of construction, rapidity in equipment, economy in outfit, and efficiency in battle. The cost of one hundred of these small vessels, including armament, engine, and machinery, he estimated, would be $10,000 each.

This dogma of “big guns and little ships” made a very favorable impression on Governor Letcher and other prominent Virginians, and so Maury decided to bring the matter of their construction before the state government. But beyond his expectation, his plan met with favor in the Confederate Congress, which took over from the state of Virginia the support of the measure by passing two acts on December 23, 1861. These authorized the construction of not more than a hundred of the gunboats, according to a plan submitted by Maury and approved by a board of naval officers, and provided also $2,000,000 for that purpose.

Maury set to work superintending the building of the gunboats on the Rappahannock and at Norfolk. They were 21 feet in beam and 112 feet in length, and drew six feet of water. Their armament consisted of a 9-inch gun forward and a 32-pounder aft, and each carried a crew of forty men. By the middle of April, 1862, Maury expected to have the last hull ready for the machinery and guns. But delay was occasioned through the difficulty of procuring materials, both iron and wood, and steam engines, and also by the lack of a sufficient number of mechanics. Meanwhile the _Merrimac_[14] (C. S. S. _Virginia_) had demonstrated the great possibilities of iron-plated rams, and the Confederate Congress authorized, on March 17, 1862, the discontinuance of all such construction of wooden gunboats as might retard the building of ironclad rams.

Secretary of the Navy Mallory, who had not warmly supported Maury’s scheme, then suggested to President Davis that the fifteen already commenced be finished according to the original design, but that the remainder of the appropriation be diverted to the building of ironclads. A few days later Maury wrote, “All my gunboats are to be converted into shot proof or abandoned”. Thus ended in comparative failure this ambitious experiment, one that was very dear to Maury. That he held Mallory very much to blame is evident from the following: “The administration is gravely proposing to build here at Richmond a navy to go down and capture Fortress Monroe! Mal. proposed the other day that I should undertake to build such a navy, asserting that it could be done. That, I should say, is a considerable stirring up. Less than a year ago, I was to be banished for advocating a navy. Now since all our naval waters have been taken away and we have nowhere to float a navy, yet we are to have a navy to take the strongest fortress in America. Hurra for Mal.!”

There were many others besides Maury who considered that Mallory’s administration of the Navy Department was inefficient. This is clearly shown by the fact that, on August 27, 1862, the Confederate Congress ordered a joint special committee of both houses to investigate the affairs of this department of the government. Its investigations extended from September 4, 1862 until March 24, 1863, and developed a great deal of evidence of inefficient management; but Mallory was too strong politically to be ousted from his position. Another severe critic of the Secretary of the Navy is Pollard who, in remarking on the great energy which the North from the beginning of the war displayed in naval preparations, declared, “The Confederate government showed a singular apathy with respect to any work of defense. The Confederate Congress had made large appropriations for the construction of gunboats on the Mississippi waters; there was the best navy-yard on the continent opposite Norfolk; there were valuable armories with their machinery at Richmond; and although the Confederate government was very far from competing with the naval resources of the enemy, yet there is no doubt, with the means and appliances at hand, it might have created a considerable fleet. In no respect was the improvidence of the government more forcibly illustrated than in the administration of its naval affairs; or its unfortunate choice of ministers more signally displayed than in the selection for Secretary of the Navy of Mr. Mallory of Florida, a notoriously weak man who was slow and blundering in his office and a butt in Congress for his ignorance of the river geography of the country”.[15]

Soon after the moving of the Confederate capital to Richmond, Maury began to feel himself out of sympathy with the Southern political leaders. A week or so after the battle of Manassas he wrote that he had wished an offer of peace to be made after that victory, but that the politicians who had become generals wanted to increase their military reputation and had opposed such a step. He went so far as to draw up a peace message which he showed to the Governor of Virginia and other influential men. But it bore no fruit. “My peace message”, he declared, “is to go, I understand, after the next great victory. May it come soon!” He did not have a very high opinion of Davis’s statesmanship in those early months of the war, but considered him haughty and self-willed, and surrounded by shallow men whom he was using to further his own future re-election. He was particularly incensed with the inability of the administration to appreciate the importance of a navy, and he feared that, by ignoring this service, they would permit Virginia to be degraded. There was talk, he declared, of making New Orleans or Charleston the money capital, and that the government was run on the theory that the Confederacy belonged to Cottondom and that Cotton meant to rule.

Maury’s strongest censures of Mallory and Davis were made during the November following the publication of his “Ben Bow” articles, which became so distasteful to Mallory and so alarming to his political ease of mind that he began to wish that Maury was entirely out of the country. Only a few days after the appearance of the first of these articles, he informed its author that he was to go to Cuba to purchase arms and other war materials, and said to him that in his judgment he could be better spared than any other officer in either army or navy. This intention was not, however, carried into effect; but Mallory continued to trifle with Maury and to prevent him from rendering any worthy service to the South.

At about this time, Maury received from the Grand Duke Constantine an invitation to come to Russia and make his home there under the patronage of that government. The letter, which was brought to Richmond under a flag of truce by the Russian minister, was as follows: “The news of your having left a service which is so much indebted to your great and successful labors has made a very painful impression on me and my companions-in-arms. Your indefatigable researches have unveiled the great laws which rule the winds and currents of the ocean, and have placed your name amongst those which will ever be mentioned with feelings of gratitude and respect, not only by professional men, but by all those who pride themselves in the great and noble attainments of the human race. That your name is well-known in Russia I need scarcely add, and though ‘barbarians’, as we are still sometimes called, we have been taught to honor in your person disinterested and eminent services to science and mankind. Sincerely deploring the inactivity into which the present political whirlpool in your country has plunged you, I deem myself called upon to invite you to take up your residence in this country, where you may in peace continue your favorite and useful occupations.

“Your position here will be a perfectly independent one; you will be bound by no conditions or engagements; and you will always be at liberty to steer home across the ocean in the event of your not preferring to cast anchor in our remote corner of the Baltic.

“As regards your material welfare, I beg to assure you that everything will be done by me to make your new home comfortable and agreeable; whilst at the same time, the necessary means will be offered you to enable you to continue your scientific pursuits in the way you have been accustomed to. I shall now be awaiting your reply, hoping to have the pleasure of seeing here so distinguished an officer, whose personal acquaintance it has always been my desire to make, and whom Russia will be proud to welcome on her soil”.

This invitation, coming at a time when Maury was being thwarted in his efforts to serve the Confederacy, must have been a great temptation. But he did not hesitate in declining the offer; he had cast his lot with Virginia and through her with the Confederacy. One of his daughters relates how he came to Fredericksburg to tell his wife and children of the offer and its rejection. There were two letters. “One was from His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Constantine, Grand Admiral of Russia”, she wrote, “and one from Baron Stoeckle, Russian Ambassador in Washington, telling him how and by what route he was to travel to Russia, where he was to go for passports, money, advice, and information. My father was now fifty-seven years old. Every maritime nation of Europe had given him evidences of their appreciation of the benefits that their commerce had received from the use of his Wind and Current Charts and Sailing Directions. He read that correspondence to us in my mother’s bedroom, all of us gathered around him, before the wood fire, the young ones leaning against him looking into his face with eager questioning eyes as he read that princely offer, and told us he would not go”.

In his courteous reply to this generous invitation, Maury wrote that it was only his stern sense of duty that enabled him to withstand such inducements as none but the most magnanimous of princes could offer,—the hospitalities of a great and powerful Empire, with the Grand Admiral of its fleets for patron and friend. He assured the Grand Duke that he was grateful for the offer of a home on the banks of the Neva, where, in the midst of books and surrounded by his family and friends, he would be free from anxiety as to the future and have the most princely means and facilities for prosecuting those studies and continuing those philosophical labors in which he had taken so much delight in former years in Washington. He then reviewed the recent events that had taken place in the United States, and explained why he had followed the fortunes of Virginia. “The path of duty and of honor”, he wrote in closing, “is therefore plain. By following it with the devotion and loyalty of a true sailor I shall, I am persuaded, have the glorious and proud recompense that is contained in the ‘well done’ of the Grand Admiral and his noble companions-in-arms. When the invader is expelled, and as soon thereafter as the State will grant me leave, I promise myself the pleasure of a trip across the Atlantic, and shall hasten to Russia that I may there in person, on the banks of the Neva, have the honor and the pleasure of expressing to her Grand Admiral the sentiments of respect and esteem with which his oft-repeated acts of kindness, and the generous encouragement that he has afforded me in the pursuits of science have inspired his—Obedient servant, M. F. Maury, Commander, C. S. Navy”.

In this decision, Maury acted like another great scientist, Louis Pasteur who, when he was offered a professorship in Italy in 1871 during the Commune, would not leave France but said, “I should consider myself a criminal deserving a penalty for desertion if I left my country in her unhappiness to seek a better paid position than she can give me”.

In March, 1862, Maury began to take a hand in the foreign affairs of the Confederacy. At this time he submitted to Colonel Orr, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, a paper setting forth the basis of a treaty with France. About a week later he wrote a long letter to Captain De Le Marche, Depot de la Marine, Paris, stating the commercial reasons why France ought to recognize the Confederacy; and these reasons were presented to President Davis for his consideration. In April, the French minister, accompanied by the Prussian envoy to the United States, came to Richmond under a flag of truce to pay in person his respects to Maury, and to deliver to him an invitation from Emperor Napoleon to come to France to reside.

In view of this correspondence as well as many other letters which he wrote to influential people in both France and Great Britain, and because of the evidence of the high esteem for him that was shown by the Grand Duke Constantine and the Emperor Napoleon, it was natural that he came to be considered a suitable representative of the South in some foreign country. As early as April, 1862 he was approached with the offer of a mission to Europe to fit out armed cruisers; but time dragged on without the matter being brought to a conclusion. He repeatedly requested of Mallory some active service, as he did not wish to be a drone; and was told by the Secretary that he thought he would be of use doing nothing. In August, Mallory did at last offer him the command of a gunboat at Charleston, but this Maury declined as the vessel could not go to sea and was intended merely for harbor defense.

Finally, in September, Maury was ordered to England on “special service”. That he was not pleased with this duty under the conditions according to which he was supposed to work is revealed in the following letter, which he wrote after the close of the war: “I was sent here really to be got out of the way, but nominally to superintend contracts with men of straw who could not pay their hotel bills but who had made pretended contracts with the Navy Department for about fifty million dollars and who never did anything. There was a great desire to have me in the Navy Department and Mallory was afraid he’d be turned out. Therefore he sent me here with hands tied, and what I did I took the responsibility a la Tennessee.”

With little enthusiasm, therefore, Maury made his preparations for departure to England. He was saddened by the necessity of parting from his family who had already begun to suffer from the fortunes of war. They had been driven from their refuge in Fredericksburg when that place was captured by Union troops on April 18, 1862, and on the following 1st of June his son Richard had his horse shot from under him in battle and was himself severely wounded. But obedient to the call of duty, he bade farewell to his family who were then making their home with relatives in Albemarle County and, with his youngest son, Matthew Fontaine, Jr., he set out for Charleston to take ship as soon as practicable for his new field of work.