Page:Matthew Fontaine Maury 1806-1873.pdf/16

 later, threatened the destruction of the government which Virginia, not a century before, had been foremost in founding; also, sympathetically impressive was he concerning the duties of free citizenship.

There is another university with which he was, in a sense, more intimately associated; not three months before the tocsin sounded which called the nation to arms, Maury was summoned by his old friend and mentor, Bishop Otey of Tennessee, to lay the cornerstone of the University of the South at Sewanee. Thither he went and assisted in laying the foundation of that institution so much needed to preserve the high religious and political ideals of our civilization. And thither, after the collapse of the Confederacy, he was again called as Superintendent, "to stand by" during the perilous days of Reconstruction. Circumstances obliged Maury to decline this call, as he did a professorship in the University of Virginia.

Events hastened. In February, 1861, seven Southern States had already seceded and formed a government with the capital at Montgomery, Alabama, while the Virginia Convention, still hoping to avert war, was sitting at Richmond. Lincoln's call for an army of 75,000 men made the issue one of coercion. Opinion changed overnight, and within three days after the fall of Sumter the Virginia Convention passed the Ordinance of Secession and called her loyal sons to her defence against invasion. In obedience to the call of duty, three days later Maury resigned from the United States Navy and unhesitatingly cast in his lot with his native State. He was appointed by the Governor of Virginia one of a Council of Three on Naval Defence. On October 23rd, 1862, he was appointed a Commander in the Confederate Navy. He had already established a Confederate Submarine Battery Service, invented an electric torpedo for the defence of Richmond by water, and assisted in fitting out the "Virginia" for her short but destructive career in Hampton Roads, when he was sent to England to purchase torpedo material, "a service clearly within the capacity of a junior officer." He, with his youngest son, left Charleston on a swift blockade runner in October, 1862, to begin in April, 1863, the service of Naval Agent of the Confederacy abroad. The next two years were fraught with