Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. II, No. 3, June, 1906Various
History
Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. II, No. 3, June, 1906
Various
Agriculture -- Southern States -- Periodicals; Horses -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
“The joint resolutions introduced into the Legislature, memorializing
the President and Congress to erect, in the shape of a lighthouse on the
Ripraps, a monument to Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, opens the way
for the nation to efface from its escutcheon a blot that has long rested
there. Soon after the death of Maury a movement was inaugurated abroad
to build at a point off the coast of Brazil, an international lighthouse
as a memorial to the ‘Pathfinder of the Seas.’ It was intended that each
nation should contribute individually to the fund for this purpose, and
that the structure should be as enduring as money and human skill could
make it. The movement found great favor with foreign nations, and would
have materialized but for the attitude of the United States. When this
government was sounded on the subject it was found that the partisan
hatred and sectional prejudice was so strong at that time that, for
diplomatic reasons, the matter was dropped.
“It is designed that the proposed monument shall be dedicated in the
presence of the combined nations of the world. And should the United
States make the occasion practicable, the grandest naval demonstration
that has ever been witnessed anywhere, and in any age, may be expected.
“The great foreign nations in whose scientific societies and aboard
whose ships Maury’s name is a synonym of reverence, would delight in an
opportunity to pay such a tribute to his genius and to his services. By
affording such an opportunity the United States government would put
honor not only upon Maury, but upon itself, and reach a higher plane in
the eyes of the governments abroad than it has ever occupied since the
war. The memorial not only would be a monument to the ‘Wizard of the
Winds and Currents,’ but a perpetual reminder of the nation’s confidence
in republican institutions and in the fact that we are a reunited
people.”
The second extract is from a tribute paid him by the Hon. A. J. Caldwell
before the “Agricultural Society.” He said:
“A farmer lad, he was trained by his country for the sea. She made him a
sailor; God made him a genius. A genius like Ariel’s, which made wind and
tide and meteor’s glare his servants, and laid its wand upon the main of
the ocean and made it the servant of the servants of men. The maritime
world to-day would be lost if his great works were blotted out from human
memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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