Mallory, Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell Mallory, the elder, began his citizenship in Florida at Key West in 1820, and was made inspector of customs there when nineteen years of age. His father died soon after arriving at Key West, and his mother Ellen Mallory, one of the first women on the island, was also first in the hearts of the early settlers of the city where she lived until her death in 1855. A lot was donated her by the proprietors of the island, in recognition of her virtues and public services. Stephen R. Mallory's boyhood had been passed in a school on Mobile bay and in the Moravian school for boys at Nazareth, Pa., and though he had not the advantage of training in higher institutions, the habit of study and independent research which he had acquired made him eventually a man of fine education. The events of prominence in his early career were his marriage, in 1838, to Angela, daughter of Don Francis Moreno, of Pensacola; his admission to the bar as an attorney in 1839; his service as a volunteer in the Seminole war; his election as judge of Monroe county, and appointment as collector of customs at Key West in 1845. He became well known throughout the State as a lawyer of marked ability and a brilliant leader in politics, and in 1851 he was elected to the United States senate. He served in this high position for ten years, during most of the period holding the position of chairman of the committee on naval affairs, for which he was peculiarly well qualified by his knowledge of maritime matters. President Buchannan tendered him the ministry to Spain, which he declined. He also declined the position of chief justice of the admiralty court, when Florida seceded. Immediately after the secession of Florida, a measure which he advocated, he resigned his seat in the United States senate, and when President Davis formed his cabinet at Montgomery, Senator Mallory was tendered and accepted the secretaryship of the navy, which he held from March 4, 1861, until the fall of the government. The difficulties of the position which he undertook were enormous. The South had no ships, and with the exception of the Tredegar works at Richmond, no adequate facilities for building such ships as were necessary. The wonderful achievements of the navy department, wonderful view of the lack of resources, and the energy displayed in providing war vessels, should be credited in due measure to the devotion and earnest determination of Secretary Mallory. As early as May, 1861, he urged the building of ironclad warships, and under his administration ironclads were constructed that revolutionized the navies of the world. In the last bitter days of the Confederate era he accompanied the president in his journey from Richmond Va., to Washington, Ga., and then joined his family at La Grange, Ga., where he awaited arrest. His imprisonment at Fort Fafayette, N. Y., extended from May 1865, to March, 1869, when he was released on parole and permitted to return to his old home in Pensacola. There he busied himself with the practice of his profession until his death in 1873. The Confederacy, to which he gave so much of his life , did not succeed, but not from any fault of the heart or brain of Mallory. One of the tablets of the monument to the Confederate dead, erected on the site of the old Spanish fort at Pensacola, is sacred to the memory of the secretary, and under his name is inscribed these expressive lines:

	" 'Tis not in mortals to command success.
		But we'll do more, Sempronius -- we'll deserve it."

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