CHAPTER XIII 

 With Maximilian in Mexico 



When Maury reached St. Thomas in the West Indies, 

 about the middle of May, 1865, he learned from the 

 newspapers that the Confederacy had completely col- 

 lapsed, but he continued his voyage to Havana. From 

 here his son Matthew, Jr. was sent on home to Virginia; 

 while Maury himself waited to consider what was best 

 for him to do — an old man now broken in health and 

 ruined in finances, separated from family and friends, and 

 without home or country. 



Though he had saved practically nothing from the 

 wreck of his financial fortunes, caused by the war, yet 

 his sterling honesty would not permit him to sell the 

 torpedo material and appropriate the money, to which 

 he then had as good a right as any other individual. 

 His conduct of the affairs of the Confederacy in England 

 had been marked with this same scrupulous honesty, 

 in the expenditure of nearly $400,000. Before leaving 

 that country, all the vouchers for that sum were turned 

 over to Bulloch, correct to a figure, as attested by the 

 following letter: "Neither can I close this, perhaps my 

 last letter on business matters, without observing that 

 although the custom here would have sanctioned your 

 receiving a large per centum in the way of commission on 

 contracts, purchases, and disbursements made by me, 

 yet you constantly set your face against it and never to 

 my certain knowledge received one shilling". 



Maury came out of the war, with no money but with 

 a clear conscience. 'T left", he wrote his wife, "$30,000 

 or $40,000 worth of torpedoes, telegraphic wire, etc. 



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