Matthew F. Maury, USN & CSN

The Naming Commission was tasked with making recommendations about assets named after “any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America”. In most cases, they did not present evidence of voluntary service. They did use deception to create false impressions of the men in question. The great and world-renowned oceanographer Matthew F. Maury is a case in point.

“…he viewed African Americans as unworthy of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. Maury envisioned a series of vast American territories in Central and South America, where enslaved humans would produce commodity crops like cotton, rubber, and sugar. 10”

That is some claim. Unworthy of life? What is the basis for that charge? Thankfully there is a footnote!

“Matthew Maury, “The Direct Foreign Trade of the South,” 147.”

What a strange footnote. No date?

Thanks to www.thenamingcommission.org I was able to find what they were referring to. It is an article Maury wrote in 1852. His views are the same as most Americans at that time. He even refers to the State of Indiana Constitution to support his argument. There is no recommendation of mass extermination. As for sending the slaves to South America, Maury makes the point that it is not different from slaves from Northern states ending up in “the markets of Va. and other southern states.” Like many 19th century Americans, he did not like slavery and was thinking of what he saw as practical ways of ending slavery in America.

The Naming Commission does not provide evidence that Matthew F. Maury volunteered to serve the Confederacy. Instead, they wrote an amateurish paragraph with claims that are easily refuted. They could not have read Maury’s letters. In one he calls slavery a curse. Like Robert E. Lee and others, he was a man of his time and did what he thought was right.