"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."[1]
The ingratitude of republics has become proverbial. So far from any reward being offered to Maury for these well known and widely acknowledged services, in the following month public attention was engrossed by the astounding action of the Naval Retiring Board, which, through the jealousy of some, placed Lieutenant Maury in official disgrace, and reduced his pay to $1500.
The following extracts from the Annual Reports of Secretaries of the Navy show the value of Maury's work at the Observatory:—
Report of Mr. William A. Graham, Secretary to the Navy.
Extract, Nov. 29th, 1851.
"The Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1849, authorized the employment of three small vessels of the Navy in testing
- ↑ Of this move in the Senate I never heard my father speak; nor was it known to any member of the family. I am indebted for its presence in the book to the kindness of his friend, Mr. Thos. Harrison of the Naval Observatory, who, in obtaining for me copies of Bills (at the capital) and reports of secretaries, &c., relating to my father and his work, came across the above. My father makes no allusion to it in a single letter that I have found written about that time. His whole correspondence for that and the following year is filled with expressions of surprise and wounded feelings that he, who had done so much for the good of the Navy, should have been treated with obloquy by his fellow-officers on the Naval Retiring Board. I doubt if he ever heard a word of the above proposition in Congress.
