John Newland Maffitt

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I've mentioned elsewhere about my admiration for John Newland Maffitt (e.g., http://civilwartalk.com/threads/my-favorite-confederates.78165/ ), tempered only by the known fact he was a slave-owner... He's one of those larger-than-life types that simply explodes off the page of whatever book he pops up in. I'm reading Norman C. Delaney's John McIntosh Kell of the Raider Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 1973), and on pages 102-103, I find:

One afternoon when the nurses had [Kell's] children on the Avenue, a stranger, a lieutenant, walked by. Seeing Munroe, he asked: "Girl, whose child is this?" and exclaimed, "The Devil!" on learning he was Kell's. He asked the same question of the nurse holding the baby, after which he exploded with, "The devil! Hell! Kell is raising a navy for himself; here's the Commodore, and here's the first lieutenant!" When Blanche [Kell's wife] later heard of her nurses' encounter, she told her husband and asked what ship had arrived. Laughing heartily, he replied, "That's John Maffitt and the Crusader. Tomorrow dress yourself in your prettiest morning dress for he will call on you about 11 o'clock. Maffitt loves ladies and children, and I know he will want to see my wife." The next morning, while hurrying to answer the door, Blanche tore her dress, but nevertheless, greeted Maffitt, telling him of her distress over the accident. He replied, "Oh, Madam, you're lovelier in a torn dress than most people are in a whole one." When Blanche commented that he must have kissed the blarney stone, Maffitt admitted that his parents were Irish, but that he was a "son of the ocean--born at sea." Blanche then told him she had heard that he had condemned her boys to a navy life, of which she heartily disapproved. Learning that she meant to persuade Kell to leave the service, Maffitt exclaimed in mock horror: "Why, your husband is the Apollo of the Navy! Would you deprive us of him? How cruel!"
​

It's tough not to crack a smile when Maffitt comes swaggering into the tale.

 

[AndyHall]

He was an amazing guy, about whom wonderful tales have been told. Many of them are true.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

He's just another one who has that air of a swashbuckler about him... I could imagine him sitting for the photographer and saying, "Wait, let me tilt my cap a bit..."

 

[georgew]

He was an amazing guy, about whom wonderful tales have been told. Many of them are true.

I think this man has been underrated in the histories. There was a very serious, first rate brain hiding behind those eyes. One of the best parts of Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy is a collection of correspondence with John M. Brooke. There are several from Maffit including a very measured one about the conflicts within the Confederate Navy's officer corps re promotion. Maffit was convinced that Mallory disliked and was prejudiced against him, but never decended into a personal attack in return. His assignments during the war do not seem to reflect a prejudice against him. Brooke consulted with Maffit because of the latter's wide experience in the pre-war coast surveys. He had a reputation as a canny seaman and did his job to the very end. I've never seen anything about his views on slavery either before or after the war.

 

[AndyHall]

Maffitt is a great example of why, whatever the limitations and failures of the Confederate Navy may have been, a lack of good officers was not one of them.