This invitation, coming at a time when Maury was being thwarted in his efforts to serve the Confederacy, must have been a great temptation. But he did not hesitate in declining the offer; he had cast his lot with Virginia and through her with the Confederacy. One of his daughters relates how he came to Fredericksburg to tell his wife and children of the offer and its rejection. There were two letters. “One was from His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Constantine, Grand Admiral of Russia”, she wrote, “and one from Baron Stoeckle, Russian Ambassador in Washington, telling him how and by what route he was to travel to Russia, where he was to go for passports, money, advice, and information. My father was now fifty-seven years old. Every maritime nation of Europe had given him evidences of their appreciation of the benefits that their commerce had received from the use of his Wind and Current Charts and Sailing Directions. He read that correspondence to us in my mother’s bedroom, all of us gathered around him, before the wood fire, the young ones leaning against him looking into his face with eager questioning eyes as he read that princely offer, and told us he would not go”. In his courteous reply to this generous invitation, Maury wrote that it was only his stern sense of duty that enabled him to withstand such inducements as none but the most magnanimous of princes could offer,—the hospitalities of a great and powerful Empire, with the Grand Admiral of its fleets for patron and friend. He assured the Grand Duke that he was grateful for the offer of a home on the banks of the Neva, where, in the midst of books and surrounded by his family and friends, he would be free from anxiety as to the future and have the most princely means and facilities for prosecuting those studies and continuing those philosophical labors in which he had taken so much delight in former years in Washington. He then reviewed the recent events that had taken place in the United States, and explained why he had followed the fortunes of Virginia. “The path of duty and of honor”, he wrote in closing, “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 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 honor 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”.