HIS PART IN THE CIVIL WAR 161 



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 illus- 

 trated than in the administration of its naval affairs; or 

 its unfortunate choice of ministers more signally dis- 

 played 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 Con- 

 gress for his ignorance of the river geography of the 

 country ".2 



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- 



2 "The Lost Cause" by Edward A. Pollard, p. 192. 



