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278 crops, many millions of dollars less than they would have received had they known, before selling, the actual cash value of the crops as accurately as it was known after they were sold. . ..

"The crops may be regarded, in one sense, as a meteorological expression of the weather, from seed time to harvest; for that there is a physical relation between the weather and the crops is obvious to all. . ..

"I wrote and lectured on this subject before the war, and I promised then, that if you would give me a lock of cotton from every bale, I would undertake, with that as a fund, to defray all the necessary expenses for forecasting the weather and crops for you, and to render to agriculture and the land services far more signal and valuable than those which commerce and navigation were then reaping from the Wind and Current Charts, and my researches touching the physics of the sea. Nay, I went further, and promised to give back your ounce of cotton, if you would lend me influence with your representatives in Congress in favour of an Act just to permit me to do for the land what I was already doing for the sea. I simply sought leave to extend my observations over the country so as to comprehend its industries, and bring continents as well as oceans within my field of research.

"I would, I have always thought, have carried the day then, and won this great boon for science and for you, but for official obstruction, which arrested its progress until the war broke upon us. . ..

"The machinery for putting this plan into operation is, so far as this country is concerned, all ready—all it wants is the gearing up. You have your Signal Office where weather reports are continually received by telegraph, and whence telegraphic forecasts are issued daily.

"And though this work is so new to the officers engaged


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Rh in it, their progress so far is in the right direction. You have also the Agricultural Bureau, in the service of which reports embodying many of the facts and observations required are already made, or might be without any additional expense. Many of the data which these two offices seek to obtain stand somewhat in the relation of cause and effect to each other—as, for instance, a dry season and bad crops. Your fields have the same area and soil this year that they had last. Why is not their yield the same? Simply because the seasons were different Do you mean to say that amid all the mind, means, and appliances of the age, the relations between the weather and the crops are past finding out? If I could, with just such a system of researches for the sea, sit down in my office and tell the navigator how he would find the wind, at any season of the year, in any part of the ocean through which he wished to sail, am I promising too much when I tell you, that by the plan I now propose the relation between the weather and the crops is as capable of scientific development as were the relations between sea-voyages and the winds twenty-five years ago?

"The new system of observations may be so arranged that the two offices may co-operate, each giving the other what it lacks to make its own observations and data complete. . ..

"I have drawn my illustrations chiefly from cotton. But the grain-growers have a larger interest at stake in this matter than even the cotton-planters; and so are all who are engaged in the cultivation of staples, of whatever kind, in any part of the world. Proper co-operation having been established between the Signal Office and Agricultural Bureau at Washington, let us see what else is required to carry the plan into effect in this country. . ..

"I believe the Agricultural Bureau has already in its employ agents in the various States to collect agricultural information. Its organization for receiving monthly or

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LETTER XXXIX.

MUCH of the disputes, and consequently many of the inconveniencies, of this world, arise from the strange difficulty (for a strange one it is) that men find in understanding each other’s meaning. Hence the never-ending game of cross-purposes, in which all of us, at times, are so much engaged. A leading cause of this disunion is a negligence in using terms appropriate to their object. The philosopher, it is true, must generalize his ideas to compass the views of his enquiring mind. It is by such an application of his intellectual faculties, that he surmounts such a variety of obstacles; that he passes from individual man to an whole people; from a people, to the human race; from the time in which he lives, to the ages that are to come; from what he sees to that which is invisible. But in conveying the fruits of his study and reflection to others, he must condescend to weigh words, compare terms, and preclude all possibility of errour in those he instructs,


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280 bimonthly reports as to the staple crops of the various sections may, for aught I know, be complete. . ..

"I am under the impression, however, that there is in this Bureau abundant room for improvement as well in organization as in conduct and management; for its utterances as to yield of crops do not, in commercial circles, seem to be received with as much confidence as are the private circulars of many produce-dealers.

"The conference I propose would deal with these defects and give efficiency to both.

"But let us suppose, for the sake of illustration and by way of showing the main features of my plan, that the proper meteorological stations have been occupied. The meteorological office, though more recently established, is the more deserving of commendation. Its forecasts of the weather are instructive; but they are too vague, as yet, to be of much practical value. Here is a fair sample of its predictions, called 'Weather Probabilities.' I take this from the first paper I happened to lay my hands on this morning. 'Washington, August 11th.—A low barometer, with cloudy weather; cold local storms will probably extend during the afternoon over New York and New England.' There is nothing in these probabilities that you can utilise. There is no reason why, with the means and appliances under the control of that office, you should not reasonably expect to have timely warnings, at least of certain great changes in the atmosphere, that you can profit by. . ..

"But the time is coming—and my plan will hasten it—when these 'probabilities' will become certainties, and be more specific and practical. . . . Of what use can it be to any living soul to know that a low barometer with local storms will probably extend during to-morrow afternoon over New York and New England? Now, if it had said what counties and parts of New York and New England


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Rh these local storms would reach and give some idea of their character and severity, whether rain, hail, wind, &c., we should have something to count upon.

"But let us suppose, for the sake of illustration and by way of showing the main features of the plan, that the proper meteorological stations have been occupied, and that the observers and co-operators report upon the crops as well as upon the weather; and that, at first and in a tentative way, a special crop-reporter be assigned to every district of 10,000 square miles in the States, who should travel over his beat continually and keep the central office posted, by monthly reports at first, as to the state and promise of the staple crops of Ids district; at the same time the meteorological observers in this district would send in their observations in detail for the same period, also by mail, while by telegraph both observers keep up their daily reports, both as to the weather and crops. This would give five crop-reporters for Alabama, five for Tennessee, four for Kentucky, and so on all over the country. In Europe, twelve for Great Britain, nineteen for France, one for Holland, &c. . ..

"How to go to work about this, and how to interest all people in a common plan, requires consultation, goodwill, and co-operation among all nations. This we must seek through their wise men and meteorologists, and to get them in conference for that purpose, with their governments at their back, is wherein your kindly aid and friendly offices, with the administration are solicited.

"Europe is ripe for this scheme. There has just been held there a 'Grand International Congress for the Advancement of Cosmographic, Geographic, and Commercial Knowledge.' A correspondent writes, 'Your resolutions for an Agricultural and Meteorological Conference International were received with cheers, and by unanimous vote ordered to be printed.'"


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282 This paper was read before the International Congress at St. Petersburg, &c., by M. Quetelet (see Le Moniteur Belgique).

In pursuance of these suggestions, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:—

"Resolved, first—That the President of this society be and hereby is instructed to petition, in behalf of the farmers of Tennessee, the United States Government—through the State Department and the Executive—in favour of the establishment, by international co-operation, of a general and systematic plan of meteorological observations and crop reports, and to request the Government, in furtherance of this object, to invite all other nations to meet, in the persons of their leading meteorologists, at an early day, in a conference similar to that held in Brussels in 1853: first, for the purpose of connecting with the plan now proposed the system that was then adopted for the sea; second, for the purpose of arranging details; and third, for the purpose of providing for a general system of telegraphic meteorology and crop reports, to the end that our knowledge of the laws which control the functions of the atmosphere may be increased, and that accurate and useful forecasts may be made at frequent intervals as to weather and crops in all countries.

"And the President of this society is desired also to request that the United States Government will co-operate in this system of research by causing the plan that may be agreed upon in conference to be carried out in this country, and to be adopted on board of the public cruisers.

"Resolved, second—That the President of this society transmit a copy of these resolutions to the State Government and to each of the agricultural societies and journals in the St ate, inviting their co-operation and requesting them to support the measure with their influence and with similar petitions."

Hon. Jacob Tompson submitted the following resolution:—


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Rh "Resolved—That this Chamber of Commerce, approving the general system of international meteorological observations and crop reports as set forth by Commander Maury, do appoint a committee of three, consisting of the President and first and second Vice-Presidents, to petition the President of the United States to take early measures to call the attention of other nations to this subject, and thereby bring about a meeting of the leading meteorologists of different nations, so as to devise a uniform system of observation and crop reports, and ensure their publication for the benefit of commerce and agriculture throughout the whole world"

The resolution was unanimously adopted.

In his enthusiastic pursuit of this favourite scheme of crop and weather forecasts for the farmers, and by an extended and exhausting lecturing tour once more to urge this subject upon the farmers, in the autumn of 1872, Maury overtaxed his strength and brought on a return of an old disorder (gout in the stomach), from which he never rallied.

At the National Agricultural Congress held in St. Louis in October, 1872, he again strongly urged the importance of an an "International Conference" between the leading agriculturists and meteorologists of all countries. Looking to the definite organization of a system of crop and weather forecasts, he pointed out the approval which it had received from the most eminent men of science in the world, and the benefits which would immediately accrue from it, and, while regretting the indifference of the Federal authorities, he urged the farmers to use their influence in its favour, in their several States. "Private interest," said he, "in this matter, I have none; the success of the scheme will benefit all of you more than its projector. I am under the ban of the Nation and can hold no office in it, either State or Federal. The moment the Government takes hold of it, my association with it ceases. I cannot share in the honour of helping to organize or of


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284 assisting to carry it out. I have no farm, neither do I cultivate a parcel of ground. Therefore I say, although I advocate this measure so earnestly, and have done so for many years, there is no one in the land who is less to be benefited by its success than I."

His health gave way under the fatigue and exposure of this last trip, before he had fulfilled all his engagements, and about the middle of October he hurried home. He exclaimed to his wife as he crossed the threshold, "My dear, I am come home to die." Loving hands with heavy hearts helped him to the bed from which he was never again to rise. For four long months he lay, at times suffering mortal pain, but in the intervals dictating and revising the last edition of his 'Physical Geography.' A short time before the anniversary of his birth, January 14th, he prayed aloud in the darkness of the night that God would forgive him the few years he lacked of man's allotted span, and take him home. He sent for his son-in-law, S. Wellford Corbin, of Farleyvale, and begged that he would stay by him and nurse him till the end. This he faithfully did, and in Ids arms the last breath was drawn.

One of his daughters thus wrote:—

He loved to have us all assembled round his bed, and if we were not all within the range of his vision he would call out the names of those he missed. Gazing earnestly in the face of each, he would say something appropriate and affectionate, always ending with "You see how God has answered my prayers, for I know yon every one;" adding, "I shall retain my senses to the last. God has granted me that as a token of my acceptance. I have set my house in order, my prayers have all been answered, my children are gathered round my bed—and now Lord, what wait I for?" He repeated the following prayer of eleven petitions, which he wished each of his children and grandchildren to use every day:


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Rh "Lord Jesus, thou Son of God and Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon me! Pardon my offences, and teach me the error of my ways; give me a new heart and a right mind. Teach me and all mine to do Thy will, and in all things to keep Thy law. Teach me also to ask those things necessary for eternal life. Lord, pardon me for all my sins, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."

He had composed this prayer for himself thirty-four years before, when his leg was broken, and had repeated it every night since. At another time he prayed, "Lord, touch my lips with hallowed fire, like Isaiah's of old, that I may testify to Thy love and mercy to me, who am but as a little child in all but wickedness."

After we had sung the last hymn he ever heard on earth—"Christ is risen"—the evening before his death, he extended both hands, and said slowly and distinctly, "The peace of God which passeth all understanding be with you all—all!" As the supreme hour drew near, he said to his eldest son. Colonel Richard L. Maury, who had been his constant and devoted nurse, "Are my feet growing cold? Do I drag my anchors?" On being answered in the affirmative, lie faintly exclaimed, "All's well." About fifteen minutes before death he said lie wished his wife and daughters to leave the room that they might not be needlessly distressed by witnessing his last struggle. Notwithstanding this, I lingered where I could see and hear without being seen, and observed him in the last moments lift his hands toward Heaven like a little child who wants to be taken up. He breathed his last at 12.40 on Saturday, February 1st, 1873.

The simplicity and fervour of his Christian faith, the completeness and child-like humility of his trust in God, and his entire resignation to the Divine will, were alike remarkable. All of these, owing to the length of his last illness, were allowed unusual scope for development, and the remembrance of them constitutes a precious heritage to his family. His


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286 tenderness as husband and father were at the same time beautifully illustrated, and this, as well as the other qualities mentioned, were at times lightened by flashes of that quaint humour which had always been one of his characteristics. He derived great comfort from a visit of a week made him in December by his brother-in-law and life-long friend. Dr. Brodie S. Herndon, of Savannah, in Georgia, though his professional judgment as to the nature of the malady, which was ulceration of the stomach, was no more encouraging than that previously given by his regular attendant, Dr. E. L. Madison, of the Virginia Military Institute.

The chief pleasure of his long confinement seemed the society of his family, on whom, individually and collectively, he loved to invoke the choicest blessings of Heaven. His youngest grandchild, an infant of a few weeks, was in the house, and he told her father that when he saw him fading fast he must bring the little one to receive his blessing. "It may be that the prayer of a repentant sinner will be answered," he added. It is needless to say that this request was complied with. He said he almost felt as if this child had come to take his place—she just entering life, he just leaving it.

To two friends at a distance—Commodore Jansen and the Rev. F. W. Tremlett—he sent loving farewell messages. He directed one of his daughters to write to the former at the Hague, and tell him how ill he was; how he longed to see him, and what a solace his love was, and had always been, to him. The latter was the friend by whom, some years before, he had been admitted to the full communion of the Church. "When I am dead," he said, "write to Tremlett and tell him that I think with gratitude of him as a means of bringing me to the communion of Christ, and that I love him. Tell him that when I die and go there" (raising his eyes upward), "I will, if a repentant sinner may, intercede for a mansion for him."


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Rh The following notice of his death appeared in Temple Bar of March, 1873:—

". . . . Of Maury's private character it is scarcely possible to speak in terms of too high eulogy. His unimpeachable integrity and strict sense of honour shed a halo of content over his whole life. He tried, through life, never to do anything of which his conscience disapproved, and he studied, even in minutest matters, exactitude and moderation. His general knowledge was very extensive, and in his own special science he excelled all other men. Yet his modesty was so great, and his simplicity so charming, that a child would feel at home in his company.

"His religious feeling was deep and personal. He never obtruded his views upon others, though he died, as he lived, in open profession and full communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

"On his death-bed, he bequeathed a prayer to his children which, like the famous one of Dr. Johnson, the great lexicographer, is touching and sublime in its simplicity.

"For the Bible he entertained the highest veneration, and its testimony, to his mind, was ever strengthened by the progress of scientific discovery.

"The Book of Job and the Psalms of David were his favourite parts of the Old Testament, especially the 107th Psalm. Very early in life he felt ' That they who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters, see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.*

"This great pioneer of meteorological science passed away, in the calm dignity and faith of the Christian philosopher, at the ripe age of sixty-seven. 'His eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force abated.'"

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288 all lay widely separated, and his dead boy (John) he knew not where.

To the request of his wife that she might be allowed to bury him in Richmond, where she herself expected to lie, he replied gently, "Very well, my dear; then let my body remain here until the spring, and when you take me through the Goshen Pass you must pluck the rhododendrons and the mountain-ivy and lay them upon me."

His body lay in state in the library of the Institute, the breast covered with the various decorations he had received from Foreign Powers. Thence, on the following Wednesday (February 5th), after the burial service, read by the Rev. William N. Pendleton, D.D., it was borne to its temporary resting-place in the Gilham vault in the cemetery, immediately opposite the tomb of "Stonewall Jackson."


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Rh


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290


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Emperor of Russia made Maury "Knight of the Order of St. Ann"; the King of Denmark made him "Knight of the Dannebrog"; the King of Portugal, "Knight of the Tower and Sword"; the King of Belgium, "Knight of the Order of St. Leopold"; the Emperor of France, "Commander of the Legion of Honour"; while Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardinia, Bremen, and France struck gold medals in his honour. The Pope also forwarded a complete set of all the medals which had been struck during his pontificate as a mark of his appreciation of Maury's services in the cause of science. To all these was afterwards added the decoration of "Our Lady of Guadeloupe," presented by the unfortunate Emperor of Mexico. His services were also recognised by numerous learned Societies, both at home and abroad.

He became Corresponding Member of the "Natuurkundige Vereeniging in Nederlandsch Indie." Batavia, 17th Feb. 1853.

Member of "Die Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Emden." Emden, March 22nd, 1854.

Member of the "Société des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres de Hainault." Mons, Dec. 7th, 1854.

Member of the "Académie Imperiale des Sciences de Russie." St. Petersburg, Dec. 29th, 1855.

Member of the "Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique." Brussels, Dec. 17th, 1854.

Corresponding Member of the "New York Lyceum of Natural History." New York, June 18th, 1865.

Correspondent of the "Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences." Philadelphia, Feb. 22nd, 1858.


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292 Member of "Die Gesellschaft zur Beförderung der Gesammten Naturwiasenschaften in Marburg." Marburg, Feb. 13th, 1856.

Member of the "Historical Society of New Jersey." Trenton, May 17th, 1856.

Member of the "Historical Society of Tennessee." Nashville, Sept. 3rd, 1857.

Member of "Die Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Berlin." Berlin, April 18th, 1858.

Member of the Bohemian Royal "Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften." Prague, January 13th, 1858.

Director "del Observatorio Nacional." Mexico, 1865.

"Consejero Honorario de Estado." Mexico, 1865.

"Miembro honorario de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadistica." Mexico, 1865.

"Miembro de la Imperial Academia Mexicana de Ciencias." Mexico, 1865.

LL.D. of the University of Cambridge. England, 1867.

He was also a member of many other learned bodies, of which the records have been lost during the war.

All the letters are inserted here that accompanied these honours from the different sovereigns of Europe, except those which were lost or destroyed during the late war. They begin with the letter from Baron Humboldt, presenting the great gold medal of science from the King of Prussia, and also the Cosmos medal.

It is now a great many years since you have been so kind as to enrich with your generous contributions the most important institutions—the Admiralty, the Academy, the School of Navigation, and Libraries—of my country. Your immense labours on currents and soundings, and the direction of winds at different seasons and latitudes, have exercised the most beneficial influence on the commerce of nations, by shortening in a surprising manner the passages by sea, and augmenting the security of navigation in all seas. The result has been the opening of new paths to navigators who have been penetrated by the correctness of your views, and an increase of the facilities previously derived from the application of steam. My Sovereign, the King of Prussia, sensible of the eminent merit


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 of your laborious undertaking, and interested by the noble efforts now making by the Government of the U. S. for the advancement of the sciences which are so closely allied with the development of the common prosperity, desires to give to Lieutenant Maury, Superintendent of the National Observatory at Washington, a mark of his gratitude, by presenting him, through the hands of our Minister, M. de Gerolt, with the modal designed as a reward for distinguished works of science. Sensible also of the affection with which you have honoured me for so long a period, the King has deemed that he would be doing you a further pleasure by adding another medal—that which his Majesty had struck for mo upon the publication of my 'Cosmos.'

I pray you to accept, my dear friend, the renewed assurance of my highest and most affectionate consideration.

Your very humble and most devoted servant.

Accompanying the medal struck in his honour, came the following letter from the Republic of Bremen:—

It affords me great pleasure to hand you, in the name of my Government, the accompanying gold medal; its German inscription may be thus rendered in English: "To the Promoter of Science, to the Guide of Navigators, Lieutenant M. F. Maury, an honorary acknowledgment of the Senate of the Republic of Bremen." This inscription, better than could any of mine, shows the sense of high appreciation in which your eminent merits, in regard to all maritime interests, are held in my country—the citizens of which are perhaps more generally engaged in navigation, and therefore more benefited by your valuable discoveries and directions than those of any other country. Your name, which has so long been an ornament of the U. S. Navy, is, and will ever be, gratefully remembered in Bremen. I beg leave to avail myself of this agreeable occasion to offer you at the same time a renewed assurance of the great personal respect and regard with which I have the honour to be


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294

I have great pleasure in informing you, by order of my Government, that His Majesty the King of Denmark, being desirous of testifying his high sense of the eminent services you have rendered to science by your important and comprehensive researches with reference to the physical geography of the sea, its winds and currents, recorded in the valuable publications of the National Observatory under your superintendence. His Majesty has been pleased to confer on you the Cross of a Knight of the Dannebrog. I shall have the honour to transmit to you the insignia of the Order as soon as received by the Legation here. I shall have the honour to be, with high consideration, sir,

Your most obedient servant,

Your letter of the 11th inst. has been received and read with a high degree of satisfaction. In it you have the kindness to inform me that His Majesty the King of Denmark, to testify his high appreciation of the services rendered by myself in the cause of science, has signified his wish to confer upon me the Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog. I consider myself fortunate, so to have wrought in my humble office that my labours in the service of my own country should have commended themselves to the favourable consideration of His Majesty; and I feel myself highly honoured that he should deem them worthy of such a signal mark of royal favour.

The organic laws of my country, however, will not allow one of its officers to accept a title from any foreign potentate. Permit me, therefore, to plead this in excuse of the request that you will proceed no further in carrying out the honourable and friendly intentions expressed in your letter.

The Government of the Emperor has been struck with the great services every day rendered to navigators of all countries by the remarkable works of which Lieut. Maury, of


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 the navy, is the author. I have accordingly agreed with the Minister of the Marine to solicit from His Majesty, as an evidence of the high esteem placed upon these works, the nomination of Mr. Maury to the Order of the Legion of Honour. I should not be willing at any time to carry out this intention before having informed Mr. Mason, and obtained the assurance that the Government of the U. S. would see no objection thereto. The Minister of the United States replied that the Constitution of the Union prohibits every American citizen occupying any position in the employ of the Government from accepting any emolument, present, charge, or other titles conferred by any foreign government, and that it is only from Congress that authority can emanate for Mr. Maury to accept the distinction proposed. He added, moreover, that he would write to Washington upon the subject.

Receive, Count, the assurance of my high consideration.

2em

The following letter accompanied a valuable present of books and charts from Admiral Hammelin, Minister of Marine at Paris, Imperial Marine Director-General of the Department of Charts and Plants:—

I hasten to transmit to you by the present courier a letter of Admiral Mathieu's relative to the present which we are preparing for you of our hydrographical collections. I make to you also on this occasion my very sincere compliments. You should be convinced, dear sir, that we shall always be disposed to be useful or agreeable to you. I only regret that we are not able to send you something of importance on the subject of winds and currents; but we are scarcely yet organized. I hope, however, that we shall yet in time bring one stone at least to that edifice which you have so carefully reared, and that we should follow in the fruitful path which you have opened for us.

Receive, dear sir, the assurance of my entire devotedness, and of my respects.


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296

Independently of the great gold medal which the Government of the Emperor has decreed you, as a mark of esteem for the eminent services which you have rendered to navigation. Admiral Hammelin, Minister of Marine, had determined to give you an especial mark of his gratitude for the communications so important and so numerous which you have addressed to the department. Admiral Hammelin has instructed me to send two complete collections, bound, of our Charts and Nautical Instructions, the one intended for the Observatory, and the other for yourself personally.

The copy which is destined for you bears on the inside of the binding the following words: "His Excellency, Admiral Hammelin, Minister of Marine, to Lieutenant Maury"; and they have just been sent through the Legation of the United States at Paris.

I pray you accept my sincere congratulations, and to be assured of the devoted affectionate sentiments and of the high consideration with which you will ever be regarded by your

P.S. Our Meteorological Service, under the active and experienced Director of Engineers, De la Marche, is now organized. As soon as we shall have collected sufficient data, we will communicate them to you.

I avail myself, with real pleasure, of the opportunity given me by your kind offer of the Sailing Directions, to express to you my warm and sincere thanks for it; to fell you how since years I observed, with intense interest and admiration, your noble and unequaled efforts, in order to forward the improvement of the scientific part of our profession.

I trust you will accept this little present as a token of my gratitude towards a man whom all seafaring nations are bound to look upon with respect and thankfulness.


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Rh

the winter of 1863, while Grant's army was lying before Vicksburg, a young gentleman of Virginia, serving in the Confederate Army of Vicksburg, disappeared under circumstances of extraordinary mystery, and to this day his fate remains as inexplicable as it was on that when he was first missed by his comrades.

On the 27th day of January, 1863, the Confederate army occupying Vicksburg and its vicinity numbered near thirty thousand effectives. Major-General Carter L. Stevenson was in chief command, and Major-General Dabney H. Maury was next in rank, and commanded the right wing, holding the lines from Hayne's Bluff on the Yazoo River to the city of Vicksburg.

On the morning of January 27th, General Maury, accompanied by Colonel William E. Burnett, his Chief of Artillery, and by his young aide-do-camp, John Herndon Maury, son of Commander Matthew F. Maury, rode to General Stevenson's head-quarters in Vicksburg, and, after concluding his business there, sent those two gentlemen of his staff to make a reconnoissancereconnaissance [sic] of certain positions near the Big Black Road. This was about 10 He has never seen his young aide-de-camp and kinsman John Maury since that moment; nor has he ever been able to ascertain with certainty what has been the fate of the young man.

Burnett returned to dinner at head-quarters, and reported that about one o'clock having finished their business about the Big Black Road, young Maury left him in order to ride down to a point opposite the mouth of the canal, and observe what the enemy was about there. No uneasiness was felt on account of his non-return that night. But when ten o'clock had passed next morning, and "Johnny," as all called him, had not yet been seen or heard of, a vague anxiety began to make itself felt. This was soon increased by hearing that on the previous evening, at about three o'clock. Generals Stevenson, Barton, and other officers from Fredericksburg, Virginia, of which town John H. Maury was


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298 a native, had seen a riderless horse resembling his grey mare on the far side of a crevasse in the levee of the plantation of Mr. Smedes, about four miles below Vicksburg. On hearing this, General Maury, accompanied by several officers and couriers, rode to the point indicated by General Stevenson, and there found his young kinsman's horse with saddle on and bridle hanging loose. A strong levee had been built by Mr. Smedes from the Highlands, more than a mile distant, down to the Mississippi River, in order to shut out the waters of a bayou, which at some seasons would otherwise inundate his plantation. Recently this bayou had torn its way through this levee, making a breach of about twenty yards width, through which the water was now running deep. The trail of the mare led from the Highlands along the levee, entered the bayou at the crevasse, and passed out on the other side. From the point of exit the mare had been running back and forth so much that the party were unable to follow the trail further, but concluded that Maury had been drowned in the attempt to cross the water, and immediately procured boats and commenced an active search for his body. This was continued without ever discovering any trace of the missing man until the next evening, when Colonel Burnett, an experienced Texas hunter, reported that he had been carefully examining the trail of the mare, and that he observed she was evidently mounted when she emerged from the bayou beyond the crevasse; that she had then been ridden at a trot along the levee to a point not far from the river; that at this point her footprints on the levee ceased, she having turned off from it into the overflow, made a detour, and come up upon it again nearer to the crevasse; that from that point where she had thus come upon the levee she had galloped (riderless) back to the brink of the crevasse, near which she remained until she was found there; that, at the point where the mare had turned off, he found the paper cases of several cartridges, different from any used in our army; also a piece of india-rubber or gutta-percha, such as Confederates could not procure, which had been used to cover the cone of a rifle. There were also at this point evidences of a scuffle, and on the brink of the Mississippi River, a few hundred yards distant, he found the edge of the bank freshly broken off, and signs that several men had there embarked in a small boat.

Although the space in which the body must lie—had the


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Rh young man been drowned, as at first supposed—was small and easily examined, no one of the searching party had discovered any trace of it. Therefore, on hearing Burnett's report, the conclusion was adopted that Maury had been captured by some scouting party from the army across the river, and had been borne, a prisoner, to the other shore.

Next morning Major Flowerer, Adjutant-General of Maury's division, was sent under a flag of truce to General Grant to make inquiry about Lieutenant Maury. To our grief and surprise, he returned in the evening with the report that nothing was known of him by the Federal Commander; but with the courteous assurance from General Grant and Admiral Porter, who knew young Maury well, that they would take all possible means to ascertain whether he had been made a prisoner by any of their party, and would communicate to General Maury the earliest intelligence they could procure.

General Grant had been personally acquainted with General Maury at West Point and in Mexico, where they had served together; and the unfortunate young officer whose fate was under investigation was known to Admiral Porter and to other officers of the United States Navy, who had met him while he was a boy at the Observatory of which his father was so long the Chief. The conviction was then positive, as it is now, that those officers were sincere in their desire and active in their efforts to find the poor boy.

Soon after the fall of Vicksburg (July, 1864), General Maury, then in Mobile, received an ill-written letter (from an unknown and evidently uneducated writer) informing him that his young cousin had been made prisoner, and had died of pneumonia, on the third day after his capture, on board a Federal gunboat lying off Vicksburg. At the time very little importance was attached to this letter. But not long after. Colonel Underhill, a gallant young Scotchman who had resigned his commission in the British army to serve in that of the Confederacy, wrote to General Maury a very clear and consistent narrative, which he had received from a Captain Smith of the 13th Iowa Regiment. United States Army.

Captain Smith and Colonel Underhill were natives of the same county in Scotland, and met during a truce before the lines of Vicksburg, Underhill then being aide-de-camp to General Stephen D. Lee. During a sociable conversation on one


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300 occasion, Smith told Underhill that on the 27th of January he had crossed from the month of the canal with a party of four or five men to the levee on Smedes' plantation, in order to ascertain if we were constructing any batteries there. That soon after reaching the levee he observed a Confederate officer riding down it towards the point where he and his scouting party were. Lying close, they waited until the officer had come up to them and dismounted. While he was looking through his field-glasses at the Federal works on the opposite bank, Smith and his men sprang upon him and secured him. The mare broke away, ran out into the "overflow," and, surmounting the levee, galloped back to the point whence she had come. As soon as it became dark. Smith recrossed the Mississippi with his prisoner, and sent him to Grant's head-quarters, where he believed he was when General Maury's flag of truce came to inquire for him two days after. Captain Smith showed Underhill the opera-glass which he had taken from his prisoner, and retained as a trophy of his exploit. The glass was that which General Maury had on that morning lent to his cousin (with his name and rank upon it).

There are several points in this narrative which give it every appearance of truth. It agreed, in the main, with Burnett's observations, and the theory deduced from them, of which neither Underhill nor Smith had ever heard. The opera-glass seemed to fix the fact of capture, while the respectable standing of the two gentlemen, and the absence of any motive or object for such a fiction, leave us no right to question any part of their story.

As to Smith's belief that young Maury was at Grant's headquarters while that General was denying all knowledge of him, we must remember that Smith could only know that Maury had been sent up to head-quarters, while Grant, having just arrived at the army with large reinforcements, and being occupied in organizing his forces, could not be expected to be interested in, or even informed, of the capture of a lieutenant. Therefore we are justified in believing young Maury was captured and borne across to the Federal Army. What was his subsequent fate is the mystery which has never yet been revealed.

For more than fifty years the father, the uncles, and many others of the kindred of this young gentleman have been well-known officers of the naval and military service of the United


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Rh States. Having passed almost his whole life at the National Observatory at Washington, he was himself well-known to scores of navy officers. These circumstances, considered together with his position as Staff-officer of the General second in command of the army then at Vicksburg; the immediate, active, and persistent search made for him; the cordial interest evinced by General Grant, Admiral Porter, Captain Breeze, and other officers of the Federal Service, in the investigation thus made about his fate, combine to make the mystery which enshrouds it as extraordinary as it has been inexplicable; while the beautiful traits, the fine intellect, the excellent attainments, and the gallant yet gentle and polite bearing of the young man, invest it, to all who know him, with a peculiar and most painful sadness.

"His parents are now in the decline of life. Exiles from their homes, they are borne down by this mysterious sorrow. If there be any one living who knows facts relative to the time and manner of young John Maury's death, we beg such an one to make them known. Let not this cruel silence be longer kept."

This appeal was made by General Maury through the columns of the ' in 1867. It was immediately copied into many Southern papers, among others by the Mobile Advertiser and Register, which says:—

"We published a week ago an article from the Richmond Whig upon the subject of the mysterious disappearance, at Vicksburg, in January, 1863, of Lieutenant John Herndon Maury, of the Confederate Army, a son of Commodore M. F. Maury, at that time serving upon the staff of his relative, Major-General Dabney H. Maury.

"On the day when that article appeared—that is, on Sunday last—a stranger called at the office of this paper and stated that he had some information upon the subject of the mysterious disappearance of the young officer.

"This gentleman gave his name as W. H. Harris, of Louisiana, formerly in the Confederate service as a scout, under the orders of General Stephen D. Lee.

"None of the editorial corps of the Advertiser and Register were in when Mr. Harris called. A memorandum of the information given by him was hastily taken by one of the clerks of the office. It is very imperfect and unsatisfactory.


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302 and we have refrained from publishing it in the hope of learning something more upon the subject, but have not been able to do so.

"Mr. Harris states, according to this memorandum, that Lieutenant Maury was captured by a party of the enemy and taken across the Mississippi River, and that he was then shot, or, in other words, murdered, by order of one Griffin, a deserter from the Confederate Service.

"He says that six balls were shot through his body, and that he was buried on the spot, about eight miles below Vicksburg, on the opposite bank of the river."

Many attempts have been made by Maury's family to communicate with this Mr. Harris; but he has never been heard from since.

If any one who reads this book can throw any light upon the awful fate of this young officer, in God's name let them communicate without further delay with his sister, Mrs. S. W. Corbin, of Farley vale, near Fredericksburg, Virginia!

hundred years ago, we wore thirteen British Colonies remonstrating and disputing with the Mother Country in discontent. After some years spent in fruitless complaints against the policy of the British Government towards us, the Colonies resolved to sever their connection with Great Britain, that they might be first independent,* and then proceed to govern themselves in their own way. At the same time they took counsel together, and made common cause. They declared certain truths to be self-evident, and proclaimed the right of every people to alter or amend their forms of government as to them may seem fit. They pronounced this right to be an inalienable right; and declared that when a long train of abuses and


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Rh usurpations evinces a design on the part of the Government to reduce a people under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government. In support of these declarations, the people of that day, in the persons of their representatives, pledging themselves, their fortunes, and their sacred honour, went to war, and in the support of their cause appealed to Divine Providence for protection. Under these doctrines, we and our fathers grew up; we were taught to regard them with a reverence almost holy, and to believe in them with quite a religious belief.

In the war that ensued, the Colonies triumphed; and in the treaty of peace, Great Britain acknowledged each one of her revolted Colonies to be a nation, endowed with all the attributes of sovereignty, independent of her, of each other, and of all temporal powers whatsoever. These new-born nations were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia—thirteen in all.

At that time, all the country west of the Alleghany Mountains was a wilderness. All that part of it which lies north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi, called the North-West Territory, and out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota, have since been carved, belonged to Virginia. She exercised dominion over it, and in her resided the rights of undisputed sovereignty. These thirteen powers—which were then as independent of each other as France is of Spain, or Brazil is of Peru, or as any one nation can be of another—concluded to unite, and form a compact called the Constitution, the main objects of which were to establish justice, secure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, and promote the general welfare. To this end they established a vicarious Government, and named it the United States. The compact had for its corner-stone the aforementioned inalienable rights. With the assertion of-these precious rights—which are so dear to the hearts of all true Virginians—fresh upon their lips, each one of these thirteen States signatories to this compact, delegated to this new Government so much of her own foreign powers as were deemed necessary for the accomplishment of its objects, reserving to herself all the powers, prerogatives, and


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304 not specifically granted or specially enumerated. Nevertheless Virginia, through abundant caution when she fixed her seal to this Constitution, did so with the express declaration, in behalf of her people, that the powers granted under it might be resumed by them whenever the same should be perverted to their injury or oppression; that "no right of any denomination given by that instrument could be cancelled, abridged, or modified by the Congress, by the Senate and House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is given for those purposes." With this agreement, with a solemn appeal to the "Searcher of all hearts" for the purity of their intentions, our delegates, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, proceeded to accept and to ratify the Constitution for the Government of the United States.

Thus the Government at Washington was created. But it did not go into operation until the other States—parties to the contract—had accepted by their act of signature and tacit agreement the conditions which Virginia required to be understood as the terms on which she accepted the Constitution, and agreed to become one of the United States. Thus these conditions became, to all intents and purposes, a part of that instrument itself; for it is a rule of law and a principle of right laid down, well understood, and universally acknowledged, that if in any compact between several parties any one of-them be permitted to enter into it on a condition, that condition inures alike to all.

Notwithstanding the purity of motive and singleness of purpose which moved Virginia to become one of the United States, sectional interests wore developed, and the seeds of faction, strife, and discord appeared in the very convention which adopted the Constitution. At that time African negroes wore bought and sold and held in slavery in all the States. They had been brought here by the Crown, and forced upon Virginia when she was in the Colonial state, in spite of her oft-repeated petitions and remonstrances; and now since she—with others—were independent and masters of themselves, they desired to put an end forthwith to this traffic. To this the North objected, on the ground that her people were


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Rh extensively engaged in kidnapping in Africa, and transporting slaves thence for sale to Southern planters. They had, it was added, such interests at stake in this business that twenty years would be required to wind it up. At that time the political balance between the sections was equal; and the South, to pacify the North, agreed that the new Government should have no power until after twenty years should have elapsed to restrict their traffic; and thus the North gained a lease and a right to fetch slaves from Africa into the South till 1808. That year, one of Virginia's own sons being President of the United States, an Act was passed forbidding a continuance of the traffic and declaring the further prosecution of it piracy.

Virginia was the leader in the war of the Revolution, and her sons were the master-spirits of it, both in the field and in the Cabinet. For an entire generation after the establishment of the Government under the Constitution, four of her sons—with an interregnum of only four years—were called, one after the other, to preside, each for a period of eight years, over the affairs of the young Republic, and to shape its policy. In the meantime Virginia gave to the new Government the whole of her North-West Territory, to be held by it in trust for the benefit of all the States alike. Under the wise rule of her illustrious sons in the Presidential chair, the Republic grew, and its citizens flourished and prospered as no people had ever done.

During this time the African slave-trade having ceased, the price of negroes rose in the South. Then the Northern people discovered that it would be better to sell their slaves to the South than to work them; whereupon acts of so-called emancipation were passed in the North. They were prospective, and were to come in force after the lapse generally of twenty years, which allowed the slave-holders among them ample time to fetch their negroes here and sell them to our people. This many of them did; and the North got rid of her slaves for value received, rather than through any real desire to set her bondmen free.

About this time also, Missouri—into which the early settlers had carried their slaves—applied for admission into the Union as a State. The North opposed it, on the grounds that slavery


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306 existed there. The South appealed to the Constitution, called for the Charter which created the Federal Government, and asked for the clause which gave Congress the power to interfere with the domestic institutions of any State, or with any of her affairs, further than to see that her organic law ensured a Republican form of government to her people. Nay, she appealed to the force of treaty obligations, and reminded the North that in the treaty with France for the acquisition of Louisiana, of which Missouri was a part, the public faith was pledged to protect the French settlers there, and their descendants, in their rights of property, which includes slaves. The public mind became excited; sectional feelings ran high|; and in 1820-21 the Union was in danger of being broken up through Northern aggression and Congressional usurpations. To quiet the storm, a son of Virginia came forward as peacemaker, and carried through Congress a Bill that is known as the "Missouri Compromise." So the danger was averted. This Bill, however, was a concession, simple and pure, to the North on the part of the South, with no equivalent whatever, except the gratification of a patriotic desire to live in harmony with the sister States and preserve the Union. This compromise was to the effect that the Southern people should thereafter waive their right to go with their slaves into any part of the common territory north of 36° 30'. Thus was surrendered up to the North for settlement, at her own time and in her own way, more than four-fifths of the entire public domain, with equal rights with the South in the remainder.

That posterity may fairly appreciate the extent of this exaction by the North, and of the sacrifice made by the South to satisfy it, to maintain the public peace and preserve the Union, it is necessary to refer to a map of the country, and to remember that at that time neither Texas, New Mexico, California, nor Arizona belonged to the United States; that the country west of the Mississippi which fell under that compromise is that which was acquired from France in the purchase of Louisiana, and which includes West Minnesota, the whole of Iowa, Arkansas, The Indian Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, embracing an area of 1,360,000 square miles. Of this the South had the privilege of settling Arkansas alone, or less than the one twenty-fifth part of the whole. The


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 sacrifice thus made by the South for the sake of the Union, will be more fully appreciated when we reflect, that under the Constitution Southern gentlemen had as much right, and the same right, to go into the territories with their slaves that men of the North had to carry with them there their apprentices and servants. Though this arrangement was so prejudicial to the South, though the Supreme Court decided it to be unconstitutional, null and void, the Southern people were still willing to stand by it; but the North would not. Backed by majorities in Congress, she only became more and more aggressive. Furthermore, the magnificent country given by Virginia to the Union came to be managed in the political interests of the North. It was used for the encouragement of European immigration into the free States; and such was the rush of settlers from abroad to the polar side of 36° 30', and for the cheap and rich lands of the North-West Territory, that the population of the North was rapidly and vastly increased—so vastly, that when the war of 1861 commenced, the immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, which the two sections had received from the Old World since this grant was made, amounted to no less than 7,000,000 souls more for the North than for the South. This increase destroyed the balance of power between the sections, placed the South in Congress hopelessly in the minority, and gave the reins of the Government over into the hands of the Northern factions. Thus, the two hundred and seventy millions of acres of the finest land on the continent, which Virginia gave to the Government to hold in trust as a common fund, was so managed as to increase Northern votes and power. Nor was this all. Large grants of land, amounting to many millions of acres, were made from this domain to certain Northern States, for their railways and other works of internal improvement, for their schools and corporations; but not an acre to Virginia.

In consequence of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and the Orders in Council, the embargo and the war with Great Britain which followed in 1812, the people of the whole country suffered greatly for the want of manufactured articles, many of which had become necessaries of life. Moreover, it was at that time against the laws of England for any artisan or piece of machinery used in her workshops to be sent to this country. Under these circumstances it was thought wise to encourage


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308 manufacturing in Now England, until American labour could be educated for it and the requisite skill acquired for the establishment of workshops. The Southern statesmen took the lead in the passage of a tariff to encourage and protect the manufacturing industries of the North. But in course of time these restrictive laws in England were repealed, and it then became easier for New England to import than to educate labour and skill. Nevertheless the protection continued, and was so effectual that the manufacturers of New England began to compete in foreign markets with the manufacturers of Old England. Whereupon the South said, "Enough. The North has free trade with us; the Atlantic Ocean rolls between this country and Europe; the expense of freight and transportation across it, with moderate duties for revenue alone, ought to be protection enough for these Northern industries. Therefore, let us do away with tariffs for protection. They have not, by reason of geographical laws, turned a wheel in the South; moreover, they have proved a grievous burden to our people." Northern statesmen did not see the case in that light; but fairness, right, and the Constitution were on the side of the South. She pointed to the unfair distribution of the public lands, to the unequal dispensation among the States of the Government favour and patronage, and to the fact that the New England manufacturers had gained a firm footing and were flourishing; therefore, protection had accomplished its purpose. Moreover, peace, progress, and development had, since the end of the French wars, dictated Free Trade as the true policy of all nations. Our senators proceeded to demonstrate by example the hardships of submitting any longer to tariffs for protection. In their arguments they quoted examples to this effect:—The Northern farmer clips his hundred bales of wool, and the Southern planter picks his hundred bales of cotton. So far they are equal, for up to this stage the Government affords to each equal protection in person and property. But the Government would not stop here. It went further—re-protected the industry of one section and taxed that of the other; for though it suited the farmer's interest and convenience to put his wool into his own waggon and to send it to a New England mill to have it made into one hundred bales of cloth, it also suited in a like degree the Southern planter to put his cotton in his own ships, and to send it to Old England to have it made into one


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Rh hundred bales of calico. And now came the injustice and the grievance. They both, so the case was made to run, preferred the Charleston market; they both, the illustration assumed, arrived by sea and proceeded together, each with his invoices of one hundred bales, to the Custom House. There the Northern man is told that he may land his hundred bales duty free; but the Southern man is required to leave forty of his in the Custom House for the privilege of landing the remaining sixty. It was in vain for the Southerner to protest, or to urge, "You make us pay bounties to Northern fishermen under the plea that it is a nursery for seamen. Is not the fetching and carrying of Southern cotton across the sea in Southern ships as much a nursery for seamen as the catching of codfish in Yankee smacks? But instead of allowing a bounty for this, you exact taxes and require protection for my Northern fellow-citizens at the expense of Southern industry and enterprise." The complaints against the tariff were, at the end of ten or twelve years, followed by another compromise in the shape of a modified tariff, by which the South again gained nothing, and the North everything. The effect was simply to lessen, not to abolish, the tribute-money exacted for the benefit of Northern industries.

Fifteen years before the war, it was stated officially from the Treasury Department at Washington, that under the tariff then in force the self-sustaining industry of the country was taxed in this indirect way in the sum of $80,000,000 annually, none of which went into the coffers of the Government, but all into the pocket of the protected manufacturer. The South, moreover, complained of the unequal distribution of the public expenditures; of unfairness in protecting, buoying, lighting, and surveying the coast. She laid her complaints on grounds like these: for every mile of sea-front in the North, there are four in the South. Yet there were four well-equipped dockyards in the North to one in the South; large sums of money have been expended for Northern, small for Southern defences; navigation of the Southern coast was far more difficult and dangerous than that of the Northern; yet the latter was better lighted, and the Southern coast was not surveyed by the Government until it had first furnished Northern ship-owners with good charts for navigating their waters and entering their harbours.


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 by using a simplicity of definition, a perspicuity of expression, and, where the barrenness of language denies the immediate term, a neatness of periphrase which not only invites but creates conception.

You are pleased, in your last letter, to charge the present age with the crime of skepticism; and you have abandoned yourself to a more than common energy on the subject. To tell you the truth, I do not very clearly perceive the tendency of your accusation. If it alludes to religion, you would, I think, find some difficulty to maintain your position: if it should glance at politicks, our national submission is certainly against you: or, leaving the higher concerns of the world, if you should apply your assertion to the ordinary intercourse and common transactions between man and man, you are truly unfortunate, as an extreme cullibility seems to be one of the leading features of the present times. The age in which we live does not possess so great a share, as former centuries, of that faith which is able to remove mountains: blind credulity, by the insults it so long offered to reason, has in a great measure destroyed itself, or is rather become modified into that sobriety of belief which is con- x


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310 Thus dealt by, there was cumulative dissatisfaction in the Southern mind towards the Federal Government, and Southern men began to ask each other, "Should we not be better off out of the Union than we are in it?" Nay, the public discontent rose to such a pitch in consequence of the tariff that nullification was threatened, and the existence of the Union was again seriously imperiled. Dissolution might have ensued had not Virginia stepped in with her wise counsels. She poured oil upon the festering sores in the Southern mind, and did what she could in the interests of peace; but the wound could not be entirely healed: Northern archers had hit too deep.

The Washington Government was fast drifting towards centralization, and the result of all this Federal partiality, of this unequal protection and encouragement, was that New England and the North fattened upon the tribute forced from the South, and prospered as few people have ever done.

But our grievances had not yet culminated. Other difficulties sprung up in quick succession. By the Constitution, a citizen of the South had a right to pursue his fugitive slave into any of the States, apprehend-and bring him back; but so unfriendly had the North become-towards the South, and so regardless of her duties under the Constitution, that Southern citizens, in pursuing and attempting to apprehend runaway negroes in the North, were thrown into gaol, maltreated, and insulted in spite of their rights. Northern people loaded the mails for the South with inflammatory publications inciting the negroes to revolt, and encouraging them to rise up, use the midnight torch, and murder their owners. Like tampering with the negroes was one among the causes which led Virginia into her original proposition to the other Colonists—that they should all, for the common good and common safety, separate themselves from Great Britain and strike for independent existence; which they did. In a resolution unanimously adopted in convention for a declaration of such independence, it was urged that the King's representative in Virginia was "tempting our slaves by every artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against their masters." To counteract the attempt by the New England people to do the like, the Legislatures of Virginia and other Southern States, felt themselves constrained to curtail


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Rh the privileges of the slave, to increase the patrols, and for the public safety to enact severe laws against the black man. This grated upon the generous feelings of our people the more, because they were thus compelled in self-defence to spread hateful laws upon the Statute-book of the State. It was a shaft that sank deep and rankled long; it brought to mind Colonial times, and put into Southern heads the idea of another separation. But this was not all. Societies were formed in the North to encourage our negroes to escape and to harbour the runaways; emissaries came down to inveigle them away; and while the evil-minded among them were engaged in this, the Northern States aided and abetted, by passing Acts prohibiting their officers to assist the Southern citizens in the capture of runaways, and hindering him from doing it himself. At length things came to such a pass, that no Southern gentleman, notwithstanding his right, dared, when he went to the North either on business or pleasure, to carry with him, as he formerly did, a body-servant. More harsh still—delicate mothers and invalids with their nurses, though driven from their Southern home, as they often are, by pestilence or plague, dared not seek refuge in the more bracing summer climates of the North; they were liable to be, mobbed, to see their servants taken away by force, and, when that was done, they found that Northern laws afforded no protection. In short, our people had no longer equal rights in a common country.

Finally, the aggressive and fanatical spirit of the North came to such a pitch against us, that, just before the Southern people began to feel that patience and forbearance were both exhausted, a band of raiders, fitted out and equipped in the North, came down upon Virginia with sword and spear in hand. They commenced in the dead of night to murder our citizens, to arm the slaves, encouraging them to rise up, burn and riot, kill and slay through the land. The ringleader was caught, tried, and hung. Northern people regarded him as a martyr in a righteous cause. His body was carried to the North for ovation; they paid homage to his remains, sang pæans to his memory, and amidst jeers and taunts for Virginia, which to this day was reverberated through the halls of Congress, enrolled his name as one who deserved well of his country.

These acts were well calculated to keep the Southern mind in a highly feverish state and in an unfriendly mood; and there


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312 were other influences at work to excite sectional feelings and beget just indignation among the Southern people. The North was commercial, the South agricultural. Through their fast-sailing packets and steamers Northern people were in constant communication with foreign nations; the South rarely except through the North, Northern men, and Northern societies. This gave the North the ear of Europe. She took advantage of this circumstance to our prejudice—defamed the South and abused the European mind with libels and slanders and evil reports against us. They represented Southern people as a lawless and violent set, where men and women were without shame; they asserted, with all the effrontery of impudent falsehood, that the chief occupation of the gentlemen of Virginia was the breeding of slaves like cattle for the shambles. To this day the whole South is suffering under this defamation of character; for it is well known that in consequence of this immigrants from Europe now refuse to come and settle in Virginia.

This long list of grievances does not end here. The population of the North had, by reason of the vast numbers of foreigners that had been induced to settle there, become so great that the balance of power in Congress was completely destroyed.

The Northern people became more tyrannical in their disposition, Congress more aggressive in its policy. In every branch of the Government the South was in a hopeless minority, and completely at the mercy of an unscrupulous majority for their rights in the Union. Emboldened by their popular majorities at the hustings, the master-spirits of the North now proclaimed the approach of an irrepressible conflict with the South, and their representative men in Congress preached the doctrine of a "higher law," confessing that the policy about to be pursued in relation to Southern affairs was dictated by a rule of conduct unknown to the Constitution, not contained in the Bible, but sanctioned, as they said, by some higher law than the Bible itself. Thus, finding ourselves at the mercy of faction and fanaticism, the Presidential election of 1860 drew nigh. The time for putting candidates in the field was at hand. The North brought out their candidate, and by their platform pledged him to acts of unfriendly legislation against us. The South warned the North and protested, the political leaders in some of the Southern States publicly declaring that if Mr. Lincoln,


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Rh their nominee, were elected, the States would not remain in the Union. He was truly a sectional candidate. He received no vote in the South, but was, under the provisions of the Constitution, duly elected nevertheless; for now the poll of the North was large enough to elect whom she pleased.

When the result of this election was announced, South Carolina and the Gulf States each proceeded to call a convention of her people; and they, in the exercise of their inalienable right to alter and abolish the common Government, and to institute a new one, resolved to withdraw from the Union—peaceably if they could. They felt themselves clear as to their right and thrice-armed; for they remembered that they were a Sovereign people, and called to mind those precious rights that had been solemnly proclaimed, and in which and for which we, and our fathers before us, had a most abiding faith, reverence, and belief. Prominent among them was, as we have seen, the right of each of these States to consult her own welfare and withdraw or remain in the Union in obedience to its dictates and the judgment of her own people. So they sent Commissioners to Washington to propose a settlement, the Confederate States offering to assume their quota of the debt of the United States, and asking for their share of the common property. This was refused.

In the meantime Virginia assembled her people in grand council too; but she had hitherto refused to come near the Confederate States in their councils. She had laid the cornerstone of the Union, her sons were its chief architects; and though she felt that she and her sister States had been wronged without cause, and had reason good and sufficient for withdrawing from a political association which no longer afforded domestic tranquillity, or promoted the general welfare, or answered its purposes, yet her love for the Union and the Constitution was strong, and the idea of putting down, without having first exhausted all her persuasives, and tried all means to save what had cost her so much, was intolerable. She thought the time for separation had not come, and waited first to try her own "mode and measure of redress." She considered that it should not be such as the Confederate States had adopted. Moreover, by standing firm, she hoped to heal the breach, as she had done on several occasions before. She asked all the States to meet her in a Peace Congress. They did so; and the North being


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314 largely in the majority, threw out Southern propositions and rejected all the efforts of Virginia at conciliation. North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, all remained in the Union awaiting the action of our State, which urged the Washington Government not to attempt to coerce the seceded States, or force them with sword and bayonet back into the Union—a thing, she held, which the Charter which created the Government gave it no authority to do.

Regardless of these wise counsels, and of all her rightful powers, the North mustered an army to come against the South, whereupon, seeing the time had come, and claiming the right which she had especially reserved, not only for herself but for all the States, to withdraw from the Union, the grand old Commonwealth did not hesitate to use it. She prepared to meet the emergency. Her people had been already assembled in convention, and they, in the persons of their representatives, passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which separated her from the North and South and left her alone, again a free Sovereign and independent State, without a single entangling alliance. This done, she sounded the notes of warlike preparation. She called upon her sons who were in the service of the Washington Government to confess their allegiance to her, resign their places, and rally around her standard. The true men among them came. In a few days she had an army of 60,000 men in the field; but her policy was still peace—armed peace, not war. Assuming the attitude of defence, she said to the powers of the North, "Let no hostile foot cross my borders." Nevertheless, they came with fire and sword; battle was joined upon her own soil, victory crowned her banners then and afterwards on many a well-fought field; but she and her sister States, cut off from the outside world by the navy they had helped to establish for the common defence, battled together against fearful odds at home for four long years,' but were at last overpowered by mere numbers; and then came disaster. Her sons who fell died in defence of their country, their homes, their rights, and all that makes native land dear to the hearts of men.


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papers throughout the States, and the journals of almost all the countries of Europe, vied with each other in expressions of sympathy and respect for Maury's memory.

An "eye-witness" wrote as follows in the Richmond Dispatch of February 3rd, 1873:—

"It was announced in all the churches in Lexington yesterday that the remains of Commander M. F. Maury would lie in state in the hall of the library of the Military Institute from three o'clock this afternoon till Wednesday, in order that all friends and admirers of this great and good man might be enabled to see his face once more. The gallery round the hall was festooned with black. A large anchor and a cross of evergreens were placed at alternate angles. The columns were draped spirally. The wall was covered with maps constructed under the supervision of the deceased. Inclining at an angle of 45 degrees, on opposite sides of the gallery, were placed two flags, the one of his native State, the other of his adopted State—Virginia and Tennessee—both heavily draped. Near the bier stood a large globe tastefully draped, and the inscription was striking in its appropriateness—' The whole world is mourning for Maury." The bier was in the centre of the hall, and was covered with black broadcloth.

"At 4 the coffin was borne from the late residence of the deceased to the hall by twelve commissioned officers of the cadet battalion, in full-dress uniform, wearing sash and belt, followed by the Faculty of the Institute.

"The coffin having arrived at the hall, and the lid having been removed, a pall was thrown over the lower part of the body, the face and upper part remaining uncovered; then, at a motion from the officer in charge, the corporal placed his sentinel on the solemn beat alongside the bier.

"The body was dressed in a plain suit of black; on the breast had been carefully placed the various Orders that had been


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316 conferred upon him by different crowned heads in Europe in recognition of his distinguished services in the cause of science. The corpse was the most beautiful and life-like I ever saw: a sweet and gentle smile rested upon the cold lips, and he looked at peace. After the corps of cadets had passed in and looked their last upon the face of their dead professor, and the crowd of mourners had gone, the hall was deserted by all save the lonely sentinel pacing his round."

"For three days the body lay in state in the library," says the Norfolk Journal "and to-day, at ten minutes past one o'clock, the remains of Commander Maury, the great American meteorologist, were laid in their temporary resting-place in. a vault in the cemetery at Lexington. Among the decorations on the breast of the dead Maury, were the 'Legion of Honour,' given by Napoleon III.; the Portuguese Order of the 'Tower and Sword,' given for 'valour, loyalty, and merit'; Order of 'St. Ann of Russia'; Order of the 'Dannebrog,' given by the King of Denmark; Order of our 'Lady of Guadeloupe,' given by the Emperor of Mexico, and placed upon him by the hands of the Empress Carlotta, and others."

A solemn funeral service was held in the hall by the Rev. Wm. Pendleton, D.D., of Grace Church, of which the deceased was a member. The coffin was placed in a hearse, drawn by four led horses, and taken to the vault, attended by the cadet battalion in full force and the Faculty of the Institute, professors and students of Washington and Lee University and citizens generally. The senior class of the Institute acted as pall-bearers.

The business houses were all closed, the bells of the churches and public buildings were tolled, and guns were fired at regular intervals from the camp. The vault is of native mountain-granite, and is immediately in front of the grave of "Stonewall Jackson."

The New York Herald, February 10th, 1873, published a letter from "A British Sailor," who proposed to show the appreciation and gratitude of seafaring men by raising a substantial subscription for the benefit of Commander Maury's family. In commenting on this the New York Herald says, "We need only add to this merited testimonial of Commander Maury's services and appeal for his family, that we shall be happy to receive any contributions for the noble object proposed."


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Rh The communication from "A British Sailor" was translated into French and published in the Courier dee États-Unis and in another French paper, and in many leading papers of the United States. When his widow was told of this she was deeply moved, and exclaimed to her children, as she burst into tears, "No, no! If your father has left me a little, that little shall be enough. Write at once to the papers and tell them I do not wish a subscription started there in my behalf"—which was done.

The following resolutions of respect and sympathy were passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, Monday, Feb. 3rd, 1873.

The following preamble and joint resolutions were offered by Mr. Anderson, of Rockbridge, after the reading of the despatch to the Governor announcing the death of Commander Maury:—

"The intelligence of the death of Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury has been received by the General Assembly with heartfelt sorrow and profound regret.

"The learning and labours and genius which through a busy lifetime he consecrated to the highest uses of his country and mankind, and his self-sacrifice and devotion to the State, render it proper that Virginia should recognise at the grave the virtues of her illustrious son.

"In the general grief which pervades thousands of hearts in both hemispheres, we but give expression to the sentiment of all who knew him when we point to his noble, earnest, and unselfish life as a beautiful illustration of what the most ardent votary of science, animated by lofty Christian principle, may accomplish for humanity. But while Virginia admires the virtues and genius of her lamented son, there is no need that she should show them to the world. The world knows him already. His fame, like his usefulness, has been limited only by the confines of commerce and of civilisation, and history will perpetuate the recollection of his character and achievements. Virginia mourns his loss, and with the loved ones of his household grieves over the sad event which has ended his


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318 labours on earth, and rejoices in the assurance that he has been borne from scenes of suffering here to the blessedness and peace of a happier and brighter world."

"Resolved (the House of Delegates concurring) that the foregoing paper be adopted by the General Assembly, and be spread upon the journals of the Senate and House of Delegates, and be communicated to the family of Commander Maury and to the Faculty of the Virginia Military Institute."

Mr. Anderson, of Rockbridge, in presenting the resolutions, made a fine eulogy upon the character, life, and services of the deceased. Mr. Wynne seconded the resolutions, and also eulogised Commander Maury, not only for his great scientific attainments, but as a Christian gentleman and as a Virginian who loved his native State with a warmth beyond comparison.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted and communicated to the House.

Senator Anderson, of Rockbridge, came with a message bearing the Senate resolutions on the death of Commander M. F. Maury.

After eulogies upon the character and abilities and services of the deceased savant and patriot, by Messrs. Progue, Gilmer, and Douglas, the resolutions were unanimously adopted, and on motion of Mr. Donald the House adjourned.

Remarks of Mr. Anderson, of Rockbridge, in the Senate, upon moving the adoption of resolutions in relation to the death of Commander Maury:—

"The melancholy intelligence which you have formally announced, Mr. President, will occasion deep sorrow wherever it is received.

"In the presence of this sad event, I can hardly trust myself to speak of the character and the history of the great man who has just been removed from the scenes of his earthly labours and usefulness.

"It was, sir, vouchsafed to no man of his generation to live to see so much good accomplished as the direct result of his own efforts and discoveries; and perhaps no man, living or dead.


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Rh has ever contributed more to the practical welfare of mankind. This is not strange, for he devoted his life to the advancement and improvement of his race, and, forgetting self, worked for the good of humanity.

"History will place his name and character in the same rank with Newton and Humboldt, for the field of his researches was no less extensive than theirs, and the benefits conferred upon the world have been as great.

"I doubt whether we yet fully realise the greatness of the work which he accomplished, and the fame which he achieved. His simple and unostentatious and laborious life was only rendered conspicuous by its results. His triumphs were the mastery of the laws of matter, and were bloodless and noiseless, but they were more beneficial, and not less glorious, than the victories of war.

"There is not a ship that moves on the ocean, there is not an article of commerce used by civilised men, which does not tell the story of his labours and his genius, and throughout civilisation, and especially throughout the maritime world, he is rightly regarded as one of the greatest benefactors.

"Others have perfected the systems which his genius originated, and have to a great extent reaped the fruits of his discoveries; but the world will, sooner or later, accord to him the debt of gratitude and the need of praise which are his due

"The crowning honour of Commander Maury's life was that, a devotee to science, he was a faithful servant of the living God, and a fearless searcher after truth; he was an humble and earnest soldier and follower of Christ.

"He has been an honour to Virginia, an honour to America, and an honour to civilisation, and in gratefully recognising this we do but honour ourselves."

The road from Lexington to the then nearest railway-station passed through a beautiful gorge in the Blue Ridge Mountains known as the Goshen Pass. When the bereaved family were moving to their future home in Richmond, bearing the remains of their dead with them for interment at that place, this pass was decorated with flowers by loving unknown hands, in response to the touching request made before his death, "When you carry me through the Goshen Pass, let it be in the


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Rh shape of a lighthouse on the Rocos, their cordial and hearty assistance and support, if it is set on foot on your side.

Now can't you find in every State, among the leading men, admirers of Maury, to club together into a memorial committee by which the circular can be issued to the scientific societies all over the world inviting their co-operation, and asking the Emperor of Brazil's sanction to erect a lighthouse by private international subscriptions to the great hydrographer; and if the Emperor would like to accept it for maintenance and repair, and by so doing let his contribution take this shape, that the lighthouse shall be built by His Majesty out of the committee's funds, and be lighted and maintained out of the Brazilian exchequer?

Maury, in his Sailing Directions, had called the attention of the United States Government to the importance of a lighthouse on the Rocos, as may be seen by the following extracts. Vol. 2, 8th Ed., 1859, p. 348:—

"The trans-equatorial trade of Europe, as well as that of America, is interested in the establishment of a lighthouse or beacon on the Rocos. Grass Island is ten feet or more—so says Lieutenant Lee—above the water, and the cocoanut would grow finely there. It is to be hoped that the request contained in the following letter will be complied with at an early day.

The new routes to the line have brought the Rocos of Brazil in 'the fair way' of all vessels bound thence to Rio, to California, India, China, Australia, or any of the ports beyond either of the two Great Southern Capes.

These shoals (the Rocos) were well surveyed by Lieutenant S. P. Lee, in the 'Dolphin,' in 1852, when she was sent, under the law of 1849, to assist in the investigations of this office. They are in lat. 3° 51' S., long. 33° 49' W. Two small islands, Grass and Sand Islands, are on these shoals. They are a few feet above the water. The first warning that a navigator has of his approach to them is generally by the breakers.

Captain Sam G. Brooks, of the bark 'Inman,' thinks that


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322 cocoanut-trees would grow on them, and serve as an admirable beacon to ships that pass that way. Seeing that these shoals lie in such a great thoroughfare—for they are also in the track of all homeward-bound traders from South America and coasters from California—and considering the importance of the suggestion, I have to request that some of the vessels on the Coast of Brazil be directed to procure both the nut and the plant of the cocoanut-palm, and plant them on the Rocos as they pass that way.

The vessels of the Paraguay Expedition, as they return homo, afford an excellent opportunity of carrying out the suggestion.

The above letters impart great interest to the 'Maury Memorial,' and with the encouraging prospect afforded by them of the hearty co-operation of foreign governments and societies in giving effect to the scheme, we are well assured that your Excellency will take pleasure in laying the subject before the general assembly for such moral support as may most fitly be given by the representations of a State which gave Maury to the world.

In behalf of the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute.

The Petersburg Index Appeal thus wrote:—

". . . . Here is a signal and assuring instance of great labours faithfully done, in honour of which the world now raises its voice of emphatic acclaim and praise. The proposed erection of a lighthouse, to be named after Maury, is a fitting expression of the world's appreciation of his services, and reflects credit on the governments which have united in this tribute to the goodness and the greatness of the dead."

Virginia took no further steps in the matter, however, and


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Rh the whole scheme fell to the ground and was forgotten. Twelve years afterwards a leading Southern journal said:—

"The value of Maury's services is incalculable, and that the Government has forgotten him gives all the more reason that the South should protect his memory and strive to perpetuate his fame.

"He was the greatest teacher that ever gave his talents to her service, and he gave up the surroundings and the work of his life to enter it. He has been dead now nearly twelve years, and yet no memorial marks his career and shows that of his stamp and kind are the men the South delights to honour."

By the grace and mercy of my blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I, Matthew Fontaine Maury, being of sound mind and healthful body, do make this my last Will and Testament.

Should I fall in the war in which my country is now, in this month of February 1862, unhappily engaged, I wish no efforts to be made by my family to recover my body. A sailor's or a soldier's burial is all, in such a case, that I desire at the hands of men. But I pray the Lord to have mercy on my soul, beseeching my Redeemer from this day to the last to strengthen my hands to fight, and to deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.

Should it please my Heavenly Father to let mo die in the bosom of my family, then a pine coffin, a plain funeral, and u simple burial, with an evergreen to mark the spot, will constitute the burial, the tomb and the epitaph, that under the circumstances, are most grateful to me. But whether I die in peace, surrounded by family and friends, or whether I fall in battle, I hope my wife and children will not grieve because I am gone before, but that they will be comforted, and abstain from the outward signs of mourning.

After my death, I wish the expenses of my burial and all my debts to be paid. The remaining portion of my possessions,


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324 save only the medals, I leave to my dear wife, who deserves all and more than I can give. I thank her for her example of piety and religion. I love her for her love and gentleness, and I honour myself by confessing to my children our obligations to her for all her goodness as wife and mother and friend.

My children, too, they have been dutiful, obedient and affectionate, giving me calm and comfort, for which I humbly thank them. Very precious are they to their Father's heart.

They will comfort and cherish their mother when I am gone, as they have done to both when I was living.

In token of my gratitude and affection and in memory I leave to my daughter Betty, the Kosmos Medal of Humboldt, awarded to me at the instance of that illustrious philosopher, by the King of Prussia.

To my daughter Nannie I leave the "Great Prussian Gold Medal of Science."

To my son Richard, the Gold Medal which the King of Sweden and Norway caused to be struck in my honour.

To my son John, the Gold Medal which the King of Holland caused to be struck for me.

To my daughter Mary, the "Great Austrian Gold Medal of Science."

To my daughter Eliza, the Sardinian Gold Medal.

To my son Matthew, I bequeath the Gold Medal which the Senate of Bremen caused to be struck for me, and because he is to be a Latin scholar, I leave to him the set of thirteen Medals presented by His Holiness the Pope.

I leave to my daughter Lucy, the Gold Medal presented by the Emperor of the French and the diamond breast-pin presented by the Archduke Maximilian.

All these medals were presented in acknowledgment of the services rendered to commerce and navigation through the Wind and Current Charts and the researches connected therewith.

I leave to my grand-daughter, Nannie Bell, the Gold Medal of the French Exhibition.

I leave to my son-in-law, Wm. A. Maury, a copy of all my works and of the various editions of which there are duplicates.

To my son-in-law. Lieutenant S. W. Corbin, C. S. Navy, I leave the publications of the French Hydrographical Office,


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Rh which are bound in red, and were presented by the Minister of Marine.

To my friend and nephew, D. H. Maury, who has been as a son to me, I leave any article among my present effects that will be most grateful to him to have as a "keepsake." (A subsequent will designated the Medals presented to him by the Pope.)

I desire that my dear, kind, and faithful sister-in-law, Mary Herndon, shall continue to reside in my family as heretofore, so long as it may be agreeable.

To my sister-in-law, Mary Herndon, I bequeath my Hexapla Testament.

To my brother-in-law, John Herndon, I leave the walking-cane of tortoise-wood which his brother Lewis brought me from the Amazon.

To my brother-in-law, Brodie Herndon, the cane that I may use in my last walk upon earth. And to Charles, a pair of my best London razors.

To my sister Betsy and her daughter Diana I wish a ring or a breastpin of my hair presented.

Thanking all my good friends and affectionate relations for their many kindnesses, and lamenting my own unworthiness, I commend them to God's holy keeping, and my soul to His gentle mercies.

Given under my hand and seal in the city of Richmond, this 4th day of May, Anno Domini 1862.

The war has made of no effect several clauses of my last Will and Testament dated as aforesaid, in that my darling boy John—God rest his noble spirit!—is no more, and in that the books left in token of esteem and affection to my two well-beloved son-sin-law, William A. Maury and Spottswood Welford Corbin, have


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 sistent with a rational being. The gaudy, awful, and presuming phantom of Papal authority, has long begun to disappear: that blazing meteor, which for so many ages dazzled the superstitious world, verges towards the horizon, and grows pale before the steady, embodied light of liberal, unimpeded science. But I cannot believe, although luxury and dissipation with their concomitant depravities have made such enormous strides among the higher orders, that infidelity in religious matters is a leading characteristick of our times. If we turn from the church to the state, the firm confidence of a very great majority of the people in a government, which, I am forced to confess, does not possess all the wisdom that such a government ought to possess, is a circumstance, which, were I to enlarge upon it, you would be perplexed to answer. In the ordinary transactions of life, the wantonness of commercial credit is well prepared to give the lie direct to any charge of incredulity. Ask Foley, Charles Fox, and a thousand others, what they think of modern infidelity; and they will tell you, that the Jews themselves, that unbelieving race, have deserted from the standard of skepticism, and, having borne the stigma of spiritual unbelief,


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 for upwards of seventeen hundred years, are at this moment groaning beneath the effects of temporal credulity.

Credula turba sumus—We are a credulous race of beings; and the most steady professors of skepticism are deceived by others, and deceive themselves, every hour of the day. Religion, which commands, among its evident truths, the belief of matters which we cannot entirely comprehend, will sometimes so habituate the mind of its submissive disciple to acts of faith, that he does not know how to withhold his assent to the most improbable fictions of human fancy; and the Credo quia impossibile est of Tertullian is readily adopted by his yielding piety. I shall confirm the truth of this observation by a story which I have heard related, and is not more extraordinary in its nature than the tone, look, and language of belief which accompanied the relation. A traveller, benighted in a wild and mountainous country, (if my recollection does not fail me, in the Highlands of Scotland,) at length beholds the welcome light of a neighbouring habitation. He urges his horse towards it; when, instead of an house, he approached a kind of illuminated chapel, from whence issued the most alarming