Although Maury was, to a certain degree, pro-slavery and a strong States’ rights man, yet he was by no means dis-unionist. In fact, during those critical months just preceding the outbreak of the War between the States he used all the power and influence at his command to keep the country united. As early as 1845 he referred in one of his letters to the “tendencies toward disunion in the nation”, and as the years went by there was a constantly increasing number of references in his correspondence to the drifting of the ship of state toward the breakers. In his opinions regarding the great question at issue, he occupied a position in the middle ground and refused to permit himself to be carried away by either the extremists at the North or those of the South. He condemned with equal vigor the effort to precipitate the acquisition of Cuba, and John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. He believed that the people as a whole, both of the North and of the South, were not in sympathy with such schemes, but that such raids and filibustering expeditions were fostered by the unwisely partisan press, pulpit, and politicians. He, therefore, suggested the calling of a council of _men out of politics_, ex-governors and old judges, from different states of the South to formulate some kind of a proposition to lay before the people of the North. “It will never do”, he wrote, “to suffer this Union to drift into dissolution”. With this end in view, he wrote to the governors of the border states, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, to act as mediators.