MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 471 



When the Ordinance of Secession was passed by the Legis- 

 lature of Virginia, Commander Maury believed that his para- 

 mount obligation was to his native State. He accordingly left 

 the service of the United States and identified his fortunes with 

 those of Virginia and the Confederacy. There can be no 

 doubt of his disinterestedness in taking this course. His mer- 

 its and the value of his services were generally recognised 

 throughout the North, and he had but recently given courses 

 of lectures in the principal towns and cities, which were a series 

 of popular ovations to him. In going into the service of the 

 Confederacy he put himself under the direction, as his imme- 

 diate superiors, of two men who, as United States Senators, 

 had been prominent in opposition to his reinstatement after he 

 had been put upon the retired list, and who are said to have been 

 hostile to him before the war and through it. Of the manner of 

 his leaving the service of the United States, he said, May 12, 

 1861, in a letter to a friend in Newburg, N. Y. : "I only saw 

 last night the remarks of the Boston Traveller about Lieuten- 

 ant Maury's treachery, his desertion, removal of buoys. It's 

 all a lie ! I resigned and left the observatory on Saturday the 

 1 2th ult. I worked as hard and as faithfully for * Uncle Sam' 

 up to three o'clock of that day as I ever did, and at three 

 o'clock I turned everything all the public property and rec- 

 ords of the office regularly over to Lieutenant Whiting, the 

 proper officer in charge. I left in press Nautical Monograph, 

 No. 3, one of the most valuable contributions I ever made to 

 navigation ; and, just as I left it, it is now in course of publi- 

 cation there, though I shall probably not have the privilege of 

 reading the proof. ... As for the buoys, I touched them not ! " 

 The Grand Duke Constantine and Napoleon III offered him 

 positions in Russia and France, respectively, which he declined. 

 He became a member of a Council of Three to assist the Gov- 

 ernor of Virginia, and in June, 1861, was appointed Chief of 

 the Seacoast, Harbour, and River Defences of the South. He 

 assisted in fitting out the Merrimac; invented a torpedo to be 

 used for harbour and land defence ; and was engaged, in the 

 summer of 1862, in mining the James River below all the de- 

 fences, when he was ordered to go to Europe to purchase tor- 

 pedo material. During the first and second years of the war 

 he published a series of papers urging the building of a navy, 

 and of protecting the bays and rivers with small floating bat- 



