On his next lecture tour, during November and December, 1858, Maury was gone about a month; he traveled some five thousand miles and delivered twenty-five lectures, at the following places: Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Indianapolis, Laporte, Cincinnati, Springfield, and St. Louis. The subjects that he discussed were: The Atlantic Telegraph, The Highways and Byways of the Sea, On Extending to the Lakes a System of Meteorological Observations for the Benefit of Lake Commerce and Navigation, On the Workshops and Harmonies of the Sea, and The Importance of a Careful Meteorological Survey of the Great North American Lakes.
The various newspapers of these cities reported large and appreciative audiences, with many often turned away for lack of seats; and they invariably praised the lectures. For example, the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel declared, “(The subject) was presented in such a pleasing and attractive form, and the facts, the experiments, and the analogies from which his conclusions were drawn were stated so clearly and clothed so beautifully that it seemed to the hearer rather like the fanciful description of the poet than the details of experimental philosophy”. The Cleveland Plain Dealer thus expressed its praise: “(His theme) was treated with a mastery of facts, an array of historical data, and a thoroughness and completeness of detail and all with a clearness, vigor, and force of language highly instructive and deeply and powerfully interesting. Without any of the graces of oratory, or the beauties and effects of elocution, without even the charms of an agreeable delivery, Lieutenant Maury invested his subject with a degree of interest and power of attraction that was such as to challenge the admiration and rivet the attention of his auditors from the opening to the close”. The tour was evidently a great success, but the exposure to the wintry storms so damaged Maury’s health as to bring on an attack of rheumatic gout on his return home, a disease from which he continued to suffer off and on until his death fifteen years later.
The following autumn, however, he was lecturing again, this time in Alabama and Tennessee. While in Nashville to address the State Agricultural Bureau, he was invited by the Tennessee Historical Society to deliver in the Hall of the House of Representatives of the Capitol his lecture on “The Geography of the Sea”. This was on October 12, 1859, and on the following day Maury visited the House while in session and was welcomed by Speaker Whitthorne in the high-flown language which was popular at that day, as one who “has by his genius and his talents made himself the peer of earth’s great men, and who by his wooing of the stars has made them to give forth speech and by his control of the winds of the sea has compelled their obedience to man and made them to become ministers of his happiness”.
All of this speaking and writing made Maury’s name known very widely all over the United States, and it was but natural for some of his friends to think of him in connection with the Presidency. They believed that, if his adopted state, Tennessee, would heartily nominate him, not as a party man but as a broad-minded, public-spirited citizen, he could be easily elected, for his popularity was great with all who did not aspire to the leadership of some particular clique. But Maury did not like politics, and besides Fate had in store for him an entirely different future. However, in the light of his attitude toward slavery and the preservation of the Union it is interesting to speculate on how different the history of the United States might have been, had he been elevated to this high office.
Matthew Fontaine Maury
This painting, by E. Sophonisba Hergesheimer, was presented in 1923 to the United States Naval Academy by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Atlanta Chapter, Georgia Division. It hangs over the entrance to the Maury Hall wing of the Academic Group of buildings.
CHAPTER VIII
His Treatment by the “Retiring Board”
It must not be supposed that Maury spent only halcyon days during his long period of service at the Naval Observatory. When it is remembered that his contacts with men were extremely numerous, and that the opportunities for unpleasant controversy were almost without number in view of the fact that he was such an ardent advocate of whatever question he took up, whether it was scientific, economic, or political, it is truly remarkable that there were so few who became hostile to him. But strange as it may seem, those who as a class were most unfriendly to Maury and least sympathetic toward his work were a considerable number of his brother officers in the navy. As a consequence, in the year 1855, a board of naval officers inflicted upon him painful mental sufferings and placed him in a humiliating position, at the very time when his name was being acclaimed by the scientists and many of the rulers of foreign countries.