Resolutions in favor of Maury’s restoration to the active service list were passed by the state legislatures of Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Of those passed by the last-mentioned state, he wrote, “These resolutions uttered by a great state in the manner of a free people have a charm that is lacking in these honors which, in the shape of medals, orders of knighthood, crosses, and decorations, have been conferred by the hands of strangers”. Finally, in view of the findings of the court of inquiry and the sympathy for Maury which had been aroused throughout the whole country, the President not only restored him to the active service list but also promoted him to the rank of commander. The announcement of this promotion was as follows: “Sir: The President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, has appointed you a Commander in the Navy from the 14th of September, 1855, on the Active List. I have the pleasure to enclose herewith your commission, dated the 27th instant (January, 1858), the receipt of which you will acknowledge to the Department. I am respectfully, I. Toucey”. Thus was Maury at last completely vindicated. CHAPTER IX SHADOWS OF COMING TROUBLES Though Maury emerged with victory perched upon his banners from his bitter conflict with the “Retiring Board”, yet he was not to enjoy again the peaceful pursuit of scientific and philosophical researches. His mind was to be distracted by the consideration of a question which was before long to rend the country in twain and incidentally cause the wreck of his scientific ambitions. Maury had always been distinctively a sympathizer in all the hopes and ambitions of the South, but he had early recognized the dangerous political potentialities in the slavery problem. As far back as 1850 he had set forth the free navigation of the Amazon River as a novel remedy for the preservation of the Union. According to his plan, Brazil was to become a country for the disposal of the surplus slaves of the South, and he hoped that in time by act of law slavery and involuntary servitude might be completely removed from the South. “The Southern states”, he wrote, “may _emancipate_ just as New York, Massachusetts, etc. emancipated their slaves—large numbers of them were not set free; they, after the acts of prospective emancipation became laws, were sold at the South; and so the South may sell to the Amazon and so get clear of them. In no other way can I see a chance for it,—the slaves of the South are worth about fifteen hundred million. Their value is increasing at the rate of thirty or forty million a year. It is the industrial capital of the South. Did ever a people consent to sink so much industrial capital by emancipation or any other voluntary act?” [Illustration: _Courtesy of Dr. K. O. Bertling of the America-Institut of Berlin._