Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/210

196 terror than the bullet. Death is death. Our cause is just, and we enter the contest in. . . . armour. However, I am indisposed to enter into any discussion with my friends on the other side. I grant them sincere; but I cannot but lament, in the depths of my heart and in excruciating agony, that their delusion is such as to have already allowed the establishment of a military despotism. I am sorry I have said so much; but it is done.

2em

I wrote you in full this morning about the thirteen St. Paul mortgages. . . . There is nothing like excitement here. All of us are of one mind—very cool, very determined; no desire for a conflict. We are on the defensive. We have nothing to fight the North about; but if the North wants a fight, it can have it. We are ready; but the North must come to us for it.

From all I see in the public journals here, we have no idea, and never had any idea of attacking Washington, or of invading any Northern right, or Northern soil.

2em

I only saw last night the remarks of the Boston Traveller about Lieutenant Maury's treachery, his desertion, removing of buoys. It's all a lie! I resigned and left the Observatory on Saturday the 20th ult. I worked as hard and as faithfully for "Uncle Sam" up to three o'clock of that day as I ever did, and at three o'clock I turned everything—all the public property and records of the office—regularly over to Lieutenant Whiting, the proper officer in charge. I left in press, 'Nautical Monograph, No. 3'—one of the most valuable contributions that I have ever made to navigation; and just as I left it, it is now in course of publication there, though I shall probably not have an opportunity of reading