144 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



Virginia and the South", which was the last thing that 

 he prepared for the press, in May, 1871. This state- 

 ment, 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 in- 

 spired 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 condem- 

 nation, 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 Geor- 

 gia, 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 philoso- 

 phy and little that is practically useful, and that there- 

 fore these publications ought no longer to be issued 

 in their present form". Among all the injuries which 



