126 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



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 proc- 

 lamation 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 Tennes- 

 see, 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 Confed- 

 eracy. 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 Fredericks- 

 burg, 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 com- 

 mission 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 



