MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY , 1806-1873
Matthew Fontaine Maury, Virginia's best-known man of science, was born near Fredericksburg on January 14, 1806, of a family which had been prominent in Virginia for several generations. He spent his boyhood in Tennessee. He became a midshipman in 1825 and spent much of the next decade at sea, including a trip around the world. In 1841, following an accident which left him lame and unfit for active service, he was given charge of the Navy's hydrographic records. In this post he began his monumental work of mapping the winds and currents of the sea, which won him world-wide recognition. He was the chief mover of an international conference in Brussels in 1853. He held the rank of Commander at the outbreak of the Civil War, when he left the United States Navy to help organize the coast defenses of the Confederacy. His letter in reply to an attractive Russian offer follows. After the war he went to Mexico and served as immigration commissioner for Emperor Maximilian. When his hope of establishing a Virginia colony in Mexico failed, he went to England. He returned to the United States in 1868 and became professor of meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute. He died there on February 1, 1873. Maury was the author of Physical Geography of the Sea (1855) and a number of other scientific publications.
A Letter to the Grand Admiral of Russia, Richmond, Va., October 29th, 1861
Admiral: — Your letter reached me only a few days ago; it filled me with emotion. In it I am offered the hospitalities of a great and powerful Empire, with the Grand Admiral of its fleets for patron and friend. Inducements are held out such as none but the most magnanimous of princes could offer, and such as nothing but a stern sense of duty may withstand.
A home in the bosom of my family on the banks of the Neva, where, in the midst of books and surrounded by friends, I am without care for the morrow, to have the most princely means and facilities for prosecuting those studies, and continuing those philosophical labours in which I take most delight: all the advantages that I enjoyed in Washington are, with a larger discretion, to be offered me in Russia.
Surely a more flattering invitation could not be uttered! Certainly it could not reach a more grateful heart. I have slept upon it. It is becoming that I should be candid, and in a few words frankly state the circumstances by which I find myself surrounded.
The State of Virginia gave me birth; within her borders, among many kind friends, the nearest of kin, and troops of excellent neighbours, my children are planting their vine and fig-tree. In her green bosom are the graves of my fathers; the political whirlpool from which your kind forethought sought to rescue me has already plunged her into a fierce and bloody war.
In 1788, when this State accepted the Federal Constitution and entered the American Union, she did so with the formal declaration that she reserved to herself the right to withdraw from it for cause, and resume those powers and attributes of sovereignty which she had never ceded away, but only delegated for certain definite and specified purposes.
When the President-elect commenced to set at naught the very objects of the Constitution, and without authority of law proceeded to issue his proclamation of 15th April last 1 , Virginia, in the exercise of that reserved right, decided that the time had come when her safety, her dignity, and honour required her to resume those "delegated" powers and withdraw from the Union. She did so; she then straightway called upon her sons in the Federal Service to retire therefrom and come to her aid.
This call found me in the midst of those quiet physical researches at the Observatory in Washington which I am now, with so much delicacy of thought and goodness of heart, invited to resume in Russia. Having been brought up in the School of States-rights, where we had for masters the greatest statesmen of America, and among them Mr. Madison, the wisest of them all, I could not, and did not hesitate; I recognized this call, considered it mandatory, and, formally renouncing all allegiance to the broken Union, hastened over to the South side of the Potomac, there to renew to Fatherland those vows of fealty, service, and devotion which the State of Virginia had permitted me to pledge to the Federal Union so long only as by serving it, I might serve her.
Thus my sword has been tendered to her cause, and the tender has been accepted. Her soil is invaded, the enemy is actually at her gates; and here I am contending, as the fathers of the Republic did, for the right of self-government, and those very principles for the maintenance of which Washington fought when this, his native State, was a colony of Great Britain. The path of duty and of honour is therefore plain. By following it with the devotion and loyalty of a true sailor, I shall, I am persuaded, have the glorious and proud recompense that is contained in the "well done" of the Grand Admiral of Russia and his noble companions-in-arms. When the invader is expelled, and as soon thereafter as the State will grant me leave, I promise myself the pleasure of a trip across the Atlantic, and shall hasten to Russia, that I may there in person, on the banks of the Neva, have the honour and the pleasure of expressing to her Grand Admiral the sentiments of respect and esteem with which his oft-repeated acts of kindness, and the generous encouragement that he has afforded me in the pursuits of science, have inspired his
Obedient servant,
M. F. Maury, Commander C. S. Navy.
To H.I.H. The Grand Duke Constantine,
Grand Admiral of Russia,
St. Petersburg.
