Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/27

 Rh later, he wrote to a friend in Fredericksburg, Virginia:—"We have won a glorious victory. I hope the first fruits of it will be to confirm the wavering allegiance of New York and Vermont to the Union. They have been threatening to secede unless peace is made with England on any terms."

Soon after the close of our war with England, the pirates of the West Indies had become a terror to all who sailed those seas. Captain Porter, then the most energetic and successful of our sailors, was ordered to fit out a squadron for their destruction. He was authorized to select his officers for a service so dangerous. His first choice was Maury to be flag captain of the fleet. This officer, like the adjutant general of the army, gave orders for all the movements.

The service was active and severe; the combats were desperate; no quarter was asked or given. The pirates were all destroyed or broken up and scattered.

As a mark of special approbation of his services, Captain John Minor Maury was sent by Commodore Porter to bear to the United States Government his report of the complete success of his operations. John sailed in the store ship Decoy, but died of yellow fever in June 1824, just outside the Capes of Norfolk, and was buried at sea, at the age of thirty one. He had been first lieutenant of a frigate; at twenty six he was the flag captain of the fleet, and was considered by Tatnall Buchanan and other compeers to have been the smartest young sailor in the American navy.

After his return from the glorious victory on Lake Champlain, John Minor Maury married his first cousin (the daughter of his uncle, Fontaine Maury) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and by her had two sons, William Lewis Maury, who died at the age of twenty of a heart problem, and Dabney Herndon Maury, who after graduating from the University of Virginia, attended West Point, served and was wounded in the War against Mexico, was in the Indian Wars and eventually became a major general in the Confederate Army. He served on many a hard fought field in the South and West, was finally placed in charge of Mobile, and was particularly