Biography

Excerpt: "Stephen Russell Mallory was a lawyer, Democratic judge and customs official in the ante-bellum period and United States Senator from Florida from 1850 until the secession of his home state in 1861. During much of his tenure in the Senate, he was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs where he worked to improve professional standards in the U.S. Navy. At the outbreak of the war, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy in the Confederate government and held this position until the end of the conflict. With little encouragement from the rest of the government, Mallory did what he could to develop and deploy under-resourced Confederate naval forces. After the war, he was imprisoned for a year but eventually pardoned by President Johnson in 1866. He practiced law until his death in 1873."