On the day this state passed her ordinance of secession, Maury wrote to his wife, who was visiting in Fredericksburg, not to return to Washington, for he expected Virginia soon to declare herself out of the Union and he would as a consequence immediately resign his commission in the navy. Three days later he regretfully forwarded to President Lincoln his resignation from the service in which he had spent so many happy and profitable years.
The circumstances connected with the writing of this resignation are thus related by Maury’s daughter Mary: “It is related of Socrates that, when his last hour had come and one of his young disciples brought him the cup of hemlock, the young man covered his face with his mantle, weeping as he presented it, and, falling on his knees, he buried his face on the couch where his dear master sat awaiting his death. When Maury determined to leave the service of the United States, he bade his secretary (Mr. Thomas Harrison) write his resignation. That true and loyal heart, which had served and loved him for almost twenty years, and whose fluent pen had rendered him such willing service, refused its office now; and, presenting the unfinished paper with one hand, he covered his eyes with the other, and exclaimed, with a choking voice and gathering tears, ‘I cannot write it, sir!’ He knew it was the death-warrant to his scientific life—the cup of hemlock that would paralyze and kill him in his pursuit after the knowledge of nature and of nature’s laws”.
As far as the disturbed political conditions permitted, Maury continued his work at the Observatory down to the very day of his resignation, his last publications being Nautical Monographs, numbers 2 and 3, on “The Barometer at Sea” and “The Southeast Trade Winds of the Atlantic” respectively. With the war clouds gathering round him he had written, “What a comfort the sea is! I have withdrawn my mind from the heart-sickening scenes that you gentlemen are meeting”. But with his leaving the Observatory this comfort was taken from him, and instead of the quiet contemplative life of a scientist he was to suffer for eight years the rough exigencies and trying uncertainties of the Civil War and its aftermath.
CHAPTER X
As His Friends and Family Knew Him Before the War
Before passing on to a consideration of Maury’s connection with the events of the Civil War, one should give some attention to him as he appeared to his friends and family during the ante bellum decade when success, fame, and happiness were all his. Some idea of his personality has, perhaps, already been conveyed through the discussion of his work and achievements up to this point in his career, though only incidentally; now the aim will be to focus attention for awhile on Maury the man.
The range of his acquaintances was very extensive, and the list of his correspondents was largely the roll of the great men of his day. Among these were the following, taken at random: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, John Tyler, Leverrier and other astronomers both at home and abroad, Humboldt, the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, Jomard, the French Egyptologist, S. F. B. Morse, Cyrus W. Field, Professor Agassiz, Dr. Kane, Lord Wrottesley, Lord Ashburton, Bishop Otey, Bishop Leonidas Polk, Matthew Calbraith Perry, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Captain Jansen of Holland, Baron Justus von Liebig, John A. Dahlgren, William Gilmore Simms, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Michael Faraday, Benjamin Silliman, Jefferson Davis, Sam Houston, Donald McKay, and dozens of others whose names are not now so well remembered,—scientists, statesmen, and men of affairs. Maury’s personality was such as easily to turn an acquaintance into a friend, and most of his friends, whether they were illustrious men or not, showed themselves to be friends indeed for they remained his friends in time of need, as will be seen in the later events of his life.
Courtesy of “The Journal of American History,” Vol. IV, Number 3 (1910).
Bust of Matthew Fontaine Maury by E. V. Valentine, in the State Library at Richmond, Va.