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.