Further quotations from the New York _Journal of Commerce_, the _National Intelligencer_, and other newspapers might be given, in which the contention was made that, without respect to party, the sentiment was practically unanimous that Maury should be restored to his place on the active list with all the “honor and reparation due to injured merit”, and that this should be done without further delay. But two more years were to pass before justice was done. Even after both the President and the Secretary of the Navy had come to realize that Maury had been unjustly treated, there was considerable further delay while Congress formulated a plan for undoing the action of the Board in cases where mistakes had been made. Petitions had been presented by Senators for about one hundred of the officers affected, and these occasioned endless debates in the halls of Congress during the year 1856. Senator Bell of Tennessee presented the petition on Maury’s behalf before the Senate on January 21, 1856, and made several long speeches in its defense. Senator Mallory of Florida, who had sponsored the bill for promoting efficiency in the navy, was naturally a strong defender of the action of the Board, and when Maury’s petition was presented he said, among other things, “If the Board has erred in any case whatever, there was no error in the case of Lieutenant Maury”, for he declared that his physical disability was sufficient cause and he had repeatedly shunned sea service. There seems to have been no personal animus in Mallory’s stand, which appears to have been merely the defense of a party measure; indeed, only one year before, when it was proposed in the Senate to make a remuneration of $25,000 to Maury for the service to the country of his wind and current charts, Mallory as chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs made a long and favorable report, in which he reviewed in detail Maury’s work and quoted words of praise from the reports of Secretaries of the Navy Graham, Kennedy, and Dobbin. His report concluded with these words: “This officer has been for years in the public service, has a family to provide for, and is entirely dependent upon his annual pay; and for these reasons your Committee think that a sum of money, insignificant indeed in comparison to his services, yet sufficient to remove his anxieties and to cheer his hopes for the future of those dependent upon him, might be justly bestowed. Your Committee recommend that a sum of 25,000 dollars be thus appropriated, and report a bill accordingly”. Such a sudden turn from eloquent support of Maury to opposition to his interests was indeed remarkable, for it was a long jump from the advocacy of a measure awarding him $25,000 to one which reduced his salary from $3,500 to $1,200 a year. Mallory was supported in his defense of the action of the Board, as it affected Maury, mainly by Senators Clayton of Delaware, Benjamin of Louisiana, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.