Mallory resigned after the Confederate government had fled from Richmond at the end of the war, and he and several of his colleagues in the cabinet were imprisoned and charged with treason.

Their marriage produced nine children, five of whom died young; surviving into adulthood were daughters Margaret ("Maggie") and Ruby, and sons Stephen R. Jr. ("Buddy"), and Attila ("Attie").

[8] In 1850, the sectional differences that eventually culminated in the Civil War led to a convention to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, for the purpose of defining a common course of action for all Southern (slave-holding) states.

Although Mallory had held no statewide offices, he was regarded as sufficiently powerful in the state Democratic Party to be chosen as an alternate delegate to the convention.

The moderates who favored working within the Union still dominated Florida politics, and they successfully sought to put Mallory in place of the radical Yulee.

The practice of flogging had been outlawed in the previous Congress, and many of the old captains believed discipline on their warships was deteriorating; they wanted a return to the old ways or at least a reasonable substitute that would enable them to exert their authority.

[15] Mallory's first major speech in Congress was in favor of a return to flogging, which he argued was needed in order that a captain would be able to control his seamen in battle.

[16][17] His views on flogging, for good or ill, were forgotten when he turned his energies to the second of President Fillmore's proposals, that of reforming the officer corps of the Navy.

Among those who were forced into early retirement was Matthew Fontaine Maury, too crippled to go to sea, but whose study of ocean currents formed the basis for the new science of oceanography.

Mallory was here somewhat ahead of his time, enthusiastically supporting iron cladding for ships before the fledgling metals industry in the country could supply it in the requisite quantities.

His pleading was unsuccessful in that the Senate did not agree to continue funding the project, but in his supporting speech he expressed some of the principles that guided his thinking when he later became the Confederate Secretary of the Navy.

Its Lecompton Constitution would allow slavery in Kansas, and citizens who were against extending the practice into new territories seized upon the widespread irregularities in the adoption procedure to oppose it.

They may make disqualifications dependent upon the tenure of freehold estate, upon the payment of tax, upon militia duty, or upon the color of skin; but whoever the State chooses to confer her political authority upon, are the people."

Cooler heads hoped to avoid bloodshed and gain possession by negotiation; they made much of the conciliatory words of William H. Seward, already selected to be Secretary of State in the incoming administration.

[28][29] As few other persons in the Confederate government were interested in naval matters, Mallory had almost free rein to shape the department, as well as the navy it controlled, according to his own views.

[32] At the start, the Confederate Navy faced one of the problems that Mallory had encountered when he was chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Naval Affairs: an overabundance of high-ranking officers who were too old to go to sea.

Mallory believed that by attacking the merchant shipping that carried trade to Northern ports he could force his Union counterpart, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, to divert his own small fleet to defend against the raiders.

From then until after the war was over, the small[38] group of raiders plundered Union shipping, inflicting damage on the American Merchant Marine that persists to the present day.

[39] They failed of their primary purpose, however, because Welles maintained the Union blockade, and international trade continued as before, carried in ships flying foreign flags.

In that first day of the battle, she had demonstrated the basic validity of Mallory's belief that armored warships could destroy the best wooden ships and were almost impervious to damage in return.

Of the others, Tennessee was destroyed on the stocks; Mississippi was hastily launched and then burned to avoid capture; and Louisiana was used merely as an ineffectual floating battery at the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, when the fate of New Orleans was decided, and she was then blown up rather than be surrendered.

He sought diligently and discreetly in England to acquire ships for the purposes of his government while working within or around the framework of the neutrality laws of the host nation.

Contracts were made with private shipyards in both Britain and France to build rams[51] to Confederate naval specifications, but their ultimate purpose could not be disguised.

On September 5, 1863, Ambassador Charles Francis Adams sent a message to Foreign Minister Lord John Russell informing him that the first of the ironclads was about to leave, and that "it would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this means war."

[57][58][59] In Charleston Harbor, Army Captain Francis D. Lee, supported by General P. G. T. Beauregard, developed a small boat that would carry a spar torpedo.

[61] The Navy Department had not provided active support for Lee's experiments, but their successful result led to the use of spar torpedoes on ships throughout the fleet.

(Less favorably for the Rebel cause, spar torpedoes were also immediately adopted by the Union Navy, and one was used in October 1864 to sink the ironclad CSS Albemarle.

[64] A large part of the population of the Northern states believed that the Davis government was somehow involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and although there was no evidence of their complicity, it was a political reality that had to be dealt with.

However, no bill of particulars to specify precisely which of his acts constituted treason was ever presented, and it became increasingly clear that no one in the Confederate government was guilty of assassinating the former president.

[66] In June 1866, Mallory visited Washington, where he called on many of his old friends and political adversaries, including President Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who received him cordially.