Stephen Mallory - Investigation of The Navy Department

Investigation of The Navy Department

The loss of New Orleans came as a tremendous shock to the Confederacy, and a spate of recriminations followed. Members of Congress, noting the failure of the ironclads, blamed the navy in particular, and suggested that there was no need for a separate Navy Department. Hoping to forestall such a proposal, Mallory was able to persuade the Congress instead to investigate the conduct of the department. Each house put five of its members on the investigating committee. The chairman, Senator Clement C. Clay, was known as one of Mallory's friends, as was Representative Ethelbert Barksdale. They were at least partially balanced by Representative Henry S. Foote, a persistent critic of secession and everything that the entire Davis administration had done. Also weighing in against Mallory was Senator Charles M. Conrad, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, who was not a member of the investigating committee but who did appear as a prosecution witness. The committee continued to meet for more than six months, and ended with no finding of neglect or malfeasance.

The investigation may have weakened Mallory politically and certainly diverted him from other duties, but it was not enough to drive him from office. Perhaps because there was no one to replace him and perhaps because he absorbed shafts that were aimed at the president, Davis retained him in the cabinet until the end of the war. After the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox, Mallory remained with Davis and the other cabinet members as they fled deeper into the South, first to Danville, Virginia, then to Greensboro, North Carolina, Charlotte, Abbeville, South Carolina, and finally Washington, Georgia. There, Mallory submitted his resignation and went to La Grange, Georgia, where he was temporarily reunited with his wife and children.