A Vindication of Virginia and the South

Matthew Fontaine Maury (January 14, 1806 - February 1, 1873) was an American oceanographer and naval officer, serving the United States and then joining the Confederacy during the American Civil War.He was nicknamed "Pathfinder of the Seas" and is considered a founder of modern Oceanography. He wrote extensively on the subject, and his book, The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), was the first comprehensive work on Oceanography to be published.A Vindication of Virginia and the South is not the production of a partisan or a politician, but of a great scientist, whose fame is world-wide, and whose utterances will have weight among the Nations and in ages to come.This able vindication will derive additional interest and value from the statement that it was not written amid the storms of the war, but in his quiet mountain home, in May, 1871, not long before the world was deprived of his priceless services. It was, in fact, the last thing he ever prepared for the press (the MS. bears the marks of his final revision), and should go on the record as the dying testimony of one whose character was above reproach, and whose conspicuous services to the cause of science and humanity entitle him to a hearing.It was published in 1871 in the Southern Historical Society Papers.