188 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



The status of Confederate agents abroad, at the close 

 of the war, was a very precarious one. As Bulloch 

 writes, 'The civil as well as the military and naval 

 representatives of the Confederate States abroad were 

 excluded from 'pardon', under the so-called Amnesty 

 Proclamations, which were issued immediately after the 

 war, and none of them could have returned to the United 

 States without the certainty of arrest, imprisonment, or, 

 under the most favorable circumstances, the alternative 

 of taking what has not been inaptly called the 'iron-clad 

 oath' ".1 



All of Maury's friends were united in advising him not 

 to return to the United States until the feeling in the 

 North should become less hostile. "Do not come 

 home", wrote his daughter, "General Lee told me the 

 other day to tell you not to". It was their opinion that 

 his letter of surrender would not place him under Gen- 

 eral Lee's parole, because of the association of his name 

 with the fitting out of Confederate privateers, and that 

 he would be arrested immediately upon his arrival. His 

 brother-in-law. Dr. Brodie Herndon, wrote him a long 

 letter, giving him information concerning the family and 

 the future of Virginia, and advised him not to return for 

 the present. "In view of the state of the public mind 

 in the North at present", he wrote, "I think it would 

 be decidedly unsafe for you to return to this country. 

 Your absence abroad in a semi-diplomatic character, 

 your prominence, and the earnest part taken by you in 

 the cause, would make you a decided object of that 

 S^engeance against leaders' so openly proclaimed and 

 so plainly visible. In time, I hope, these vindictive 



1 "The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe" by James D. 

 Bulloch, II, 415. 



