Maury resigned from the naval service and left the National Observatory on April 20, 1861. He declared that he worked as hard and as faithfully for Uncle Sam up to three o’clock of that day as he had ever done, and at that hour turned over all the public property and records of the office to Lieutenant Whiting, the officer who was next in authority. He left the Observatory with the deepest regret. “Its associations”, he wrote, “the treasures there, which, with your help and that of thousands of other friendly hands, had been collected from the sea, were precious to me and as I turned my back upon the place a tear furrowed my cheek, for I could not but recollect that such things were”.
From Richmond, on April 26th, he wrote to Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, who had requested to know his reasons for his resignation, the following reply: “I am not aware of any law or rule that requires an officer tendering resignation to give reasons therefor. In this case, however, I have no objections to state them. They are these: our once glorious Union is gone; the state through which and for which I confessed allegiance to the Federal government has no longer any lot or part in it. Neither have I. I desire to go with my own people and with them to share the fortunes of our own state together. Such are the reasons for tendering my resignation, and I hope the President will consider them satisfactory”. Maury afterwards stated in detail the reasons for his resignation in his “A Vindication of Virginia and the South”, which was the last thing that he prepared for the press, in May, 1871. This statement, which must be read as a whole in order to get the full force of his arguments, is much too long to quote here; but it is sufficient to say that his action was prompted by the same feelings and motives that inspired Lee and the dozens of other officers in both army and navy who went with their respective states when secession was decided upon. Furthermore, as will be seen later, in Maury’s case the sacrifices involved were perhaps greater than those suffered by any other man who cast his lot with the South.
But, strangely, from the very beginning of the Civil War Maury’s name was singled out for special condemnation, and many false statements were made about him and his work. He was accused of carrying on treasonable correspondence with the enemy before he resigned from the service, and of having the buoys removed from the Kettle Bottom Shoals and of taking away with him from the Observatory the maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. His astronomical and meteorological work was ridiculously depreciated, and toward the close of the war the National Academy of Sciences went so far as to pass on January 9, 1864 this resolution: “Resolved by the National Academy of Sciences, That in the opinion of this Academy the volumes entitled ‘Sailing Directions’, heretofore issued to navigators from the Naval Observatory, and the wind and current charts which they are designed to illustrate and explain, embrace much which is unsound in philosophy and little that is practically useful, and that therefore these publications ought no longer to be issued in their present form”. Among all the injuries which Maury suffered from casting his fortunes with Virginia and the South, these hostile condemnations by former fellow officers and scientists, made in the midst of the animosities of civil strife, were perhaps the most damaging, for they cast a cloud upon his good name and the fame which he had won in the field of oceanography,—a cloud of misrepresentation which after more than half a century has not been entirely removed.
Upon Maury’s arrival at Richmond, he lost no time in offering his services to Governor Letcher, who granted him a commission as commander in the Navy of Virginia, dated April 23, 1861. At about the same time he appointed him a member of his Executive Council, only just authorized by an ordinance of April 20. Its other members were: Honorable John J. Allen, President of the Court of Appeals; Colonel Francis H. Smith, Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute; R. L. Montague; and Thomas S. Haymond. This council, ordered to devise plans for the arming and protecting of the state in the shortest time possible, continued to function until June 19 of the same year, when its manuscript minutes come abruptly to a close. On April 25, Virginia had joined the Confederate States and adopted their provisional government; and on April 29 Richmond had become the Capital of the Confederacy. The Virginia State Navy was then incorporated with that of the Confederacy, and on June 10 Maury received his commission in the Confederate States Navy.
On the following day Maury wrote, “I begin to feel very useless. I am afraid there is too much red tape yet left in the world. I hope it may not tie us down”. After remarking that there were small men in the Confederate government, and that there had been conflicts between Virginia authority and that of the Confederacy, he continued, “Davis, it appears to me, is grasping after patronage. Don’t think he likes Lee. Lee told me yesterday he did not know where he was. Nor do I. I can see though how that may have proceeded from an honest misunderstanding. But it’s bad in times like this to so jar your general that he does not know whether he is in or out of power.... Where the wrong is I am not so clear, but the biggest promotions seem to be on the other side. You may rely upon it, the Confederate States government has come here feeling that there is between it and us something of antagonism”. Maury had reason to feel uncertain as to his standing, for Davis had been unfriendly to him when he was seeking vindication for the unjust action of the Retiring Board, and his strongest opponent at that time had been Mallory, then Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee and later Secretary of the Navy in the Confederate government. Besides, among the naval officers whom Maury had affronted during that unpleasant controversy was Buchanan, who had become the officer of highest rank in the Confederate Navy.
Maury had the affairs of his family on his mind also, and he was particularly concerned over his wife who had been made ill by the shock incident to the sudden outbreak of the war and the breaking up of her home in Washington. She and her younger children had, through the kindness of a cousin, John Minor, been taken into his home in Fredericksburg, a handsome brick house with a lovely garden, which still stands at 214 Main Street much as it appeared when the refugees occupied it. Here came also Maury’s two married daughters with their children, Mrs. W. A. Maury with her one child from Washington, and Mrs. Corbin with her two children from her country place which was so near the Potomac that it soon fell into the hands of the Federals. His sons-in-law and his two eldest sons had early entered the Confederate army. His mind was greatly disturbed also because of his financial investments in the North, which had been made through his cousin Rutson Maury of New York and his friend Hasbrouck of Newburgh, New York. The latter remained a true friend in spite of the war, and at Maury’s request was able to save a small part of his investments. Their relation, as effected by the war, is an example of the many that existed of like nature, and its peculiar poignancy is indicated in this letter: “The nefarious Civil War that rages has not and I trust never may cool our hearts towards you and your dear family. My son Henry is an officer in the army of the North, he could not with honor decline to serve in it. Your son Richard is an officer in the army of the South, as you informed me in one of your letters, and could not probably with honor decline to serve in it. I sincerely hope that Henry and Richard may never meet in any battle during this unhappy war, and by duty and honor be obliged to shed each other’s blood”.
Maury, however, did not allow separation from his family and depression of spirits to interfere with the performance of what he considered his duty, but made an enthusiastic endeavor to make the most possible out of conditions as he found them. He first assisted in fortifying Jamestown Island in the James River and Gloucester Point on the York River, early in May, 1861, for the defense of Richmond. Besides he sat almost daily with the Governor’s Executive Council to consider the many problems which confronted the State in her time of great need. In the summer of 1861 he was appointed Chief of the “Naval Bureau of Coast, Harbor, and River Defense”, and began to plan the construction of submarine mines to be placed in the rivers and harbors of the South. These were to be exploded under enemy ships by electricity, and insulated wire was needed for this purpose. He accordingly sent a Richmond merchant to New York to secure a large quantity of such wire. The merchant failed in his mission, but Maury undismayed set about devising mines which could be exploded in a different way. Each mine consisted of an oak cask filled with 200 pounds of powder, in the head of which was a trigger attached to a fuse. The casks were joined together in pairs by 500 feet of rope, and when in a favorable position were let go to be carried by the tide down upon an enemy ship in such a way as to have the rope catch across the cable of the vessel. As the mines drifted near the ship, the strain on the rope would release the triggers, ignite the fuses, and explode the mines.
Early in July, 1861, Maury himself commanded an expedition from Sewell’s Point near Norfolk, which made an attempt to destroy the Union vessels Minnesota, Roanoke, and Cumberland, then off Fortress Monroe. The attacking party in five boats set off about ten o’clock. Maury was in the first boat with the pilot and four oarsmen; while each of the others carried an officer and four men, together with one of the mines. It was a very quiet Sunday evening, and as the enemy had no guard boats, the attacking party was able, under muffled oars, to take up a position near enough for their purpose just as seven bells struck on board the intended victims. The mines were immediately set adrift, and the boats rowed away. But no explosions followed, for something had gone wrong with the mechanism of the mines. Afterwards it was found that the type of fuse which had been used would not burn in a pressure of twenty feet of water, the depth at which the mines had been floated. Later, the torpedoes, as they were then called, were discovered by the Federals, taken out of the water, and carried away as relics.
Maury was not overly discouraged, but returned to Richmond to continue his experiments so as to perfect an apparatus which would be more successful next time. These experiments were made possible through the assistance of the Richmond Medical College, which furnished batteries and offered the use of its laboratory, and by the help of the Tredegar Iron Works as well as those of Talbot and Son. Maury carried on these experiments at the house of his cousin Robert H. Maury in Richmond at 1105 East Clay Street, which was marked in 1910 by the Confederate Memorial Society with this commemorative inscription: “In this house, Matthew Fontaine Maury, LL. D., U. S. N., C. S. N., invented the submarine Electrical Torpedo, 1861–62”.
While engaged in this work, Maury set forth his hopes of success in the following letter: “I am experimenting upon my deep sea batteries and so far, as difficulties have presented themselves, they have one by one been overcome. I shall be ready for demonstration next week I hope.... Then if I can get the powder, I will launch in the Potomac, the Chesapeake, and its tributaries hundreds of these things in pairs, each pair connected by a line several hundred feet in length and in such a manner that if the line fouls the vessel while she is at anchor, or any vessel crosses the line while she is under weigh, the tightening of the line will pull a trigger and let the things off. I think I can drive the enemy out of the Chesapeake. This is a business, this thing of blowing up men while they are asleep, that I don’t glory in.... I shall endeavor to pick up and save the crews from drowning”.