HIS TREATMENT BY THE "RETIRING BOARD" 113 



eminent services of the late Retiring Board, entitled 

 'Lights and Shadows of the Fifteen'. It will embrace all 

 the shades in the lives of those fifteen Spartans, from 

 their entrance into the service up to their Thermopylae 

 defeat' of 201 brothers in arms, by which gallant action 

 they 'promoted themselves'. It will be the commence- 

 ment of a new epoch in the naval history of the country, 

 and will be rich, racy, and spicy". 



Further quotations from the New York Journal of 

 Commerce, the National Intelligencer, and other news- 

 papers might be given, in which the contention was made 

 that, without respect to party, the sentiment was prac- 

 tically unanimous that Maury should be restored to his 

 place on the active list with all the ''honor and reparation 

 due to injured merit", and that this should be done 

 without further delay. But two more years were to pass 

 before justice was done. Even after both the President 

 and the Secretary of the Navy had come to realize that 

 Maury had been unjustly treated, there was considerable 

 further delay while Congress formulated a plan for un- 

 doing the action of the Board in cases where mistakes 

 had been made. Petitions had been presented by 

 Senators for about one hundred of the officers affected, 

 and these occasioned endless debates in the halls of 

 Congress during the year 1856. Senator Bell of Tennes- 

 see presented the petition on Maury's behalf before the 

 Senate on January 21, 1856, and made several long 

 speeches in its defense. 



Senator Mallory of Florida, who had sponsored the 

 bill for promoting efficiency in the navy, was naturally 

 a strong defender of the action of the Board, and when 

 Maury's petition was presented he said, among other 

 things, "If the Board has erred in any case whatever, 



