CHAPTER IX

SHADOWS OF COMING TROUBLES

Though Maury emerged with victory perched upon his banners from his bitter conflict with the “Retiring Board”, yet he was not to enjoy again the peaceful pursuit of scientific and philosophical researches. His mind was to be distracted by the consideration of a question which was before long to rend the country in twain and incidentally cause the wreck of his scientific ambitions.

Maury had always been distinctively a sympathizer in all the hopes and ambitions of the South, but he had early recognized the dangerous political potentialities in the slavery problem. As far back as 1850 he had set forth the free navigation of the Amazon River as a novel remedy for the preservation of the Union. According to his plan, Brazil was to become a country for the disposal of the surplus slaves of the South, and he hoped that in time by act of law slavery and involuntary servitude might be completely removed from the South. “The Southern states”, he wrote, “may _emancipate_ just as New York, Massachusetts, etc. emancipated their slaves—large numbers of them were not set free; they, after the acts of prospective emancipation became laws, were sold at the South; and so the South may sell to the Amazon and so get clear of them. In no other way can I see a chance for it,—the slaves of the South are worth about fifteen hundred million. Their value is increasing at the rate of thirty or forty million a year. It is the industrial capital of the South. Did ever a people consent to sink so much industrial capital by emancipation or any other voluntary act?”

With characteristic energy Maury pressed the question upon the notice of the public. Lieutenant Lewis Herndon’s report of his exploration of the Amazon Valley was submitted to Congress on January 26, 1853, and soon afterwards there appeared in the _National Intelligencer_ and the _Union_ of Washington at irregular intervals seven articles signed “Inca”, in which the commercial, mineral, and agricultural potentialities of the Amazon region were painted in glowing colors. The free navigation of the Amazon River was demanded of Brazil by Maury in these “Inca” articles; and at the meeting of the Memphis Convention in June of the same year resolutions were adopted urging the same proposition. These resolutions were then reported to the House of Representatives in the form of a “Memorial of Lieutenant Maury in behalf of the Memphis Convention in favor of the free navigation of the Amazon River”.

This propaganda made at first a very unfavorable impression on the Brazilians, and caused them to suspect that a scheme of annexation by the United States was the real reason for the insistence on the opening of their great river to free navigation. One Brazilian newspaper asserted that “this nation of pirates, like those of their race, wish to displace all the people of America who are not Anglo-Saxon”. So strong was the feeling thus aroused that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs reported on February 23, 1855 that further action on the Maury memorial was for the present inexpedient. However, at last, on December 7, 1866, an agreement was signed providing that after September 7 of the following year the Amazon should be free to the merchant ships of all nations, as far as the frontier of Brazil.

Later even the Brazilians themselves conceded the beneficial influence of Maury in bringing this about. “After the publication in the _Correio Mercantil_ of his (Maury’s) memorial”, wrote the Brazilian historian, Joaquim Nabuco,[10] “and his description of the Amazon region, locked up from the world by a policy more exclusive than Japan’s or Dr. Francia’s, the cause of the freedom of navigation was triumphant. Tavares Bastos himself received from the book by Maury the patriotic impulse which converted him into a champion of this great cause”. Events moved too swiftly, however, in the United States for the development of the Amazon Valley to play any part in the settling of the slavery question.

Although Maury was, to a certain degree, pro-slavery and a strong States’ rights man, yet he was by no means dis-unionist. In fact, during those critical months just preceding the outbreak of the War between the States he used all the power and influence at his command to keep the country united. As early as 1845 he referred in one of his letters to the “tendencies toward disunion in the nation”, and as the years went by there was a constantly increasing number of references in his correspondence to the drifting of the ship of state toward the breakers. In his opinions regarding the great question at issue, he occupied a position in the middle ground and refused to permit himself to be carried away by either the extremists at the North or those of the South. He condemned with equal vigor the effort to precipitate the acquisition of Cuba, and John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. He believed that the people as a whole, both of the North and of the South, were not in sympathy with such schemes, but that such raids and filibustering expeditions were fostered by the unwisely partisan press, pulpit, and politicians.

He, therefore, suggested the calling of a council of _men out of politics_, ex-governors and old judges, from different states of the South to formulate some kind of a proposition to lay before the people of the North. “It will never do”, he wrote, “to suffer this Union to drift into dissolution”. With this end in view, he wrote to the governors of the border states, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, to act as mediators.

His letter to Governor Packer of Pennsylvania will give an idea of what he hoped to accomplish. “When the affairs of a nation are disturbed”, he declared, “quiet people, however humble their station, may be justified in stepping a little out of their usual way. In all exertions of duty, something is to be hazarded; and I am sure you have only time to hear what I wish to write—none to listen to apologies for venturing to write you this letter. You recollect that, in the nullification times of South Carolina, Virginia stepped forward as mediator, and sent her commissioners to that state with the happiest results. But we are now in the midst of a crisis, more alarming to the peace and integrity of the Union than those memorable times. We have the people, in no less than seven of those states, assembling or preparing to assemble in their sovereign capacity to decide in the most solemn manner known to them whether they will remain in the Union or no. The most remarkable feature in the whole case is, it appears to me, this—that here we have a national family of states that have lived together in unity for nearly three score years and ten, and that a portion of them are preparing to dissolve these family ties and break up the Union, because—because of what, sir? Ask legislators, ask governors, ask whom you will, and there are as many opinions as to the causes of discontent and the measures of redress as there are leaves in the forest. At no time have the people of any of the discontented states, acting in their sovereign capacity, ever authorized a remonstrance to be made to their sister states of the North against their course of action. We have heard a great deal of this from politicians, partisans, and others, but if the people of any one of the Southern states, acting in their sovereign capacity, have ever remonstrated with the people of the Northern states as to the causes of dissatisfaction and complaint, and thus laid the matter formally before you of the North, I cannot call it to mind. Neither has any Northern state so much as inquired of the people of any Southern state, either as to the cause of their offense or as to the terms and conditions upon which they would be willing to remain in the Union.

“It does appear to me that in and out of Congress we are all at sea with the troubles that are upon us; that the people, and the people alone, are capable of extricating us. You, my dear sir, and your state—not Congress—have it in your power to bring the people into the ‘fair way’ of doing this. This brings me to the point of my letter—then why will not the great state of Pennsylvania step forth as mediator between the sections? Authorize your commissioner to pledge the faith of his state that their ultimatum shall not only be laid before the people of the Keystone State, assembled likewise in their sovereign capacity, but that she will recommend it to her sister states of the North, for like action on their part, and so let the people, and not the politicians, decide whether this Union is to be broken up”.

No tangible results, however, came from this effort, and Maury began to despair of the two sections’ being able to arrive at a peaceable solution of the difficult problem. He had a clear conception of the nature of this fundamental question dividing the sections. “The disease”, he wrote, “the root of the thing, is not in cotton or slavery, nor in the election of Lincoln. But it is deep down in the human heart. The real question is a question of Empire. And I do not think our political doctors will be able to treat the case upon any other diagnosis than this. The country is divided into sections; it is immaterial by what influence”.

Meanwhile, Maury went about his work at the Observatory as well as he could with his mind distracted by the unsettled state of the country. In September, 1860, he made a visit with Mrs. Maury and other members of his family to Niagara Falls, and to Newburgh, New York to see the family of his old friend Hasbrouck. During the following month he went to Tennessee to speak at the laying of the corner stone of the University of the South at Sewanee, as has already been related. On this visit, Maury went to Nashville, where he delivered two speeches. One was to the school children on the subject of the sea; the other was before the same audience that heard Robert L. Yancey and on the same subject, the state of the country. Yancey urged war and made extravagant claims for success; but Maury counseled moderation and warned the people that danger was ahead. In November, he was in England whence he had gone to arrange for the copyrighting of a new edition of his “Physical Geography of the Sea”.

During that month momentous happenings occurred in the United States. On November 6, Lincoln was elected President, and the day following the legislature of South Carolina took steps which resulted in the calling of a secession convention. This convention unanimously passed, on December 20, an ordinance declaring the state of South Carolina no longer in the Union.

By that time Maury had returned to the United States, and he made a last effort to secure mediation through Commodore Stockton as the representative of the Governor of New Jersey; but early in the year 1861 he sorrowfully wrote that the New Jersey plan had missed fire. After the failure of this attempt he sought in vain to be made a member of the “Peace Congress”, which was called by the Border States and met in Washington in the month of February. In this he offered to represent Tennessee, which he referred to as his Naomi.

South Carolina had been followed out of the Union by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In February, the seceding states set up a provisional government with Montgomery as the capital and with Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander H. Stephens as Vice President. But Maury urged the “barrier” states, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to remain in the Union in order to conserve the peace, to mediate, and to organize a re-annexation party for the next Presidential election.

On the day of Lincoln’s inauguration, Maury wrote, “The new President is now on his way to the Capitol, and the _Express_ reports ‘All quiet’, as I took it for granted it would be. I have no idea of any disturbance, or any attempt even at a plot. Of course, you will see the Inaugural as soon, if not sooner than I shall, for, having the telegraph, Mr. Lincoln may literally speak his polyglot through tongues of fire. Officers of the Army and Navy—should war come between the sections—will have a hard time; and, indeed, who will not? No military man can permit himself to accept service with a mental reservation. All who are foes of his flag, and whom his country considers enemies of hers, are enemies of his; therefore, if we have a war between the sections, every man who continues in ‘Uncle Sam’s’ service, is, in good faith, bound to fight his own, if his own be on the other side. The line of duty, therefore, is to me clear—each one to follow his own state, if his own state goes to war; if not, he may remain to help on the work of reunion. If there be no war between the sections, we must hoist the flag of re-annexation, to carry the elections of ’64 upon that issue, bring back the seceding states, and be happier and greater and more glorious than ever. As soon as the smoke clears away, you will see that the old party lines have been rubbed out.... Virginia is not at all ready to go out of this Union; and she is not going out for anything that is likely to occur short of coercion—such is my opinion”.

But the broken fragments of the Union were not to be reunited in any such peaceful fashion, and Maury was soon to be forced to follow his native state into the bloody conflict. The overt act precipitating the war was the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861. Maury thought that the _Star of the West_ with recruits for the garrison of the fort should not have been sent, for it was but an invitation to South Carolina to an overt act which would still further widen the breach between the sections.

In any case, the overt act came, when under fear of reinforcements from a strong squadron which was in preparation President Jefferson Davis on April 12, 1861 ordered General Beauregard to reduce Fort Sumter. Three days afterward President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling on the state governors to furnish 75,000 state militia. This caused Virginia to pass an ordinance of secession on the 17th of April. Moreover, in Tennessee, Maury’s adopted state, sentiment favorable to the Confederacy began to crystallize, and on May 8 her legislature decided also in favor of separation from the Union and leagued the state with the Southern Confederacy. But in spite of the fact that Maury had written of Tennessee as his Naomi, it was his native Virginia that decided his future for him.

On the day this state passed her ordinance of secession, Maury wrote to his wife, who was visiting in Fredericksburg, not to return to Washington, for he expected Virginia soon to declare herself out of the Union and he would as a consequence immediately resign his commission in the navy. Three days later he regretfully forwarded to President Lincoln his resignation from the service in which he had spent so many happy and profitable years.

The circumstances connected with the writing of this resignation are thus related by Maury’s daughter Mary: “It is related of Socrates that, when his last hour had come and one of his young disciples brought him the cup of hemlock, the young man covered his face with his mantle, weeping as he presented it, and, falling on his knees, he buried his face on the couch where his dear master sat awaiting his death. When Maury determined to leave the service of the United States, he bade his secretary (Mr. Thomas Harrison) write his resignation. That true and loyal heart, which had served and loved him for almost twenty years, and whose fluent pen had rendered him such willing service, refused its office now; and, presenting the unfinished paper with one hand, he covered his eyes with the other, and exclaimed, with a choking voice and gathering tears, ‘I cannot write it, sir!’ He knew it was the death-warrant to his scientific life—the cup of hemlock that would paralyze and kill him in his pursuit after the knowledge of nature and of nature’s laws”.

As far as the disturbed political conditions permitted, Maury continued his work at the Observatory down to the very day of his resignation, his last publications being Nautical Monographs, numbers 2 and 3, on “The Barometer at Sea” and “The Southeast Trade Winds of the Atlantic” respectively. With the war clouds gathering round him he had written, “What a comfort the sea is! I have withdrawn my mind from the heart-sickening scenes that you gentlemen are meeting”. But with his leaving the Observatory this comfort was taken from him, and instead of the quiet contemplative life of a scientist he was to suffer for eight years the rough exigencies and trying uncertainties of the Civil War and its aftermath.