later, threatened the destruction of the government which Vir- 

 ginia, not a century before, had been foremost in founding; also, 

 sympathetically impressive was he concerning the duties of free 

 citizenship. 



There is another university with which he was, in a sense, 

 more intimately associated; not three months before the tocsin 

 sounded which called the nation to arms, Maury was summoned 

 by his old friend and mentor, Bishop Otey of Tennessee, to lay 

 the cornerstone of the University of the South at Sewanee. Thither 

 he went and assisted in laying the foundation of that institution 

 so much needed to preserve the high religious and political ideals 

 of our civilization. And thither, after the collapse of the Con- 

 federacy, he was again called as Superintendent, "to stand by" 

 during the perilous days of Reconstruction. Circumstances oblig- 

 ed Maury to decline this call, as he did a professorship in the Uni- 

 versity of Virginia. 



Events hastened. In February, 1861, seven Southern States 

 had already seceded and formed a government with the capital 

 at Montgomery, Alabama, while the Virginia Convention, still 

 hoping to avert war, was sitting at Richmond. Lincoln's call for 

 an army of 75,000 men made the issue one of coercion. Opinion 

 changed overnight, and within three days after the fall of Sumter 

 the Virginia Convention passed the Ordinance of Secession and 

 called her loyal sons to her defence against invasion. In obe- 

 dience to the call of duty, three days later Maury resigned from 

 the United States Navy and unhesitatingly -cast in his lot with his 

 native State. He was appointed by the Governor of Virginia 

 one of a Council of Three on Naval Defence. On October 23rd, 

 1862, he was appointed a Commander in the Confederate Navy. 

 He had already established a Confederate Submarine Battery 

 Service, invented an electric torpedo for the defence of Rich- 

 mond by water, and assisted in fitting out the "Virginia" for her 

 short but destructive career in Hampton Roads, when he was 

 sent to England to purchase torpedo material, "a service clearly 

 within the capacity of a junior officer." He, with his youngest 

 son, left Charleston on a swift blockade runner in October, 1862, 

 to begin in April, 1863, the service of Naval Agent of the Con- 

 federacy abroad. The next two years were fraught with inex- 



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