David Farragut

David Farragut was born July 5, 1801, near Knoxville, Tennessee, one of five children of a Menorcan merchant captain and a mother who died of yellow fever in 1808 nursing a naval officer she had taken in as a boarder. That officer, Commander David Porter, adopted the orphaned boy, who renamed himself David in his foster father's honor. Warranted a midshipman at nine, he sailed with Porter aboard the frigate Essex into the War of 1812, and by twelve he had been given command of a captured prize ship in the Pacific and talked down its mutinous crew. Decades of an unremarkable peacetime navy career followed before the promotions caught up with the boy who had already commanded a ship.

By 1861 Farragut was sixty, a career officer with a modest record and a Southern birthplace that made Washington wary of him. Given the Gulf Blockading Squadron in February 1862, he ran his fleet past Forts Jackson and St. Philip on April 24, 1862, and took New Orleans, the Confederacy's largest city, within days, shutting its port for the rest of the war. Congress created the rank of rear admiral for him that July, the first in the Navy's history. At Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, with the ironclad USS Tecumseh sunk by a mine, he pushed his flagship Hartford past the minefield anyway — contemporary accounts of his exact words differ, but the fleet took the bay. He was made vice admiral that December and, in 1866, the country's first full admiral.

Farragut's Union loyalty was not automatic. He had lived for years in Norfolk, Virginia, married a Virginian, and watched the state secede in April 1861. Friends assumed the Tennessee-born officer would go with it. He told them he would serve the flag he had carried since he was nine, moved his family north, and did not go back. At Port Hudson on March 14, 1863, that same decisiveness cut the other way: he pushed his fleet past the river batteries before General Nathaniel Banks's army was in position to provide the required diversion, so the mission fell to the Navy alone. Only two of his seven vessels got through. The USS Mississippi ran aground, burned and exploded before dawn, taking 64 men with it, a cost the New Orleans and Mobile Bay stories tend to leave out.

Farragut died of a heart attack on August 14, 1870, while inspecting the Portsmouth Navy Yard, and was buried in the Bronx with one of the largest military funerals New York had staged, President Grant among the mourners. He had been allowed to stay on active duty for life, an honor given to only a handful of officers since. Augustus Saint-Gaudens's bronze of him in Madison Square Park, unveiled in 1881, was the sculptor's first public commission and set a template later American military statues followed. The exact wording of "Damn the torpedoes" was disputed even by witnesses at the time, and ships named USS Farragut have served in the Navy for more than a century since.

David Farragut's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Capture of New Orleans mission
  Ran the fleet past Forts Jackson and St. Philip, April 24, 1862 1862
• Rank of rear admiral established other
  Created by Congress specifically for him, first in Navy history 1862
• Battle of Mobile Bay mission
  Closed the Confederacy's last major Gulf port 1864
• Rank of admiral established other
  He became the first full admiral in U.S. Navy history 1866

• July 5, 1801 aged 0 Born near Knoxville, Tennessee
• 1808 aged ~7 Mother dies of yellow fever; adopted by naval officer David Porter
• December 17, 1810 aged 9 Warranted a midshipman at age nine
• 1813 aged ~12 Given command of a captured prize ship in the Pacific at twelve
• April 24, 1862 aged 60 Runs the fleet past Forts Jackson and St. Philip and takes New Orleans
• July 16, 1862 aged 61 Made the first rear admiral in U.S. Navy history
• March 14, 1863 aged 61 Loses USS Mississippi passing the Port Hudson batteries 64 men died when the grounded ship burned and exploded.
• August 5, 1864 aged 63 Wins the Battle of Mobile Bay
• August 14, 1870 aged 69 Dies of a heart attack in Portsmouth, New Hampshire

• Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
  16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. appointed
• William Tecumseh Sherman 1820–1891
  Union general whose campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas helped destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war. coordinated with
• Robert E. Lee 1807–1870
  Confederate commander whose military reputation and later commemoration became central to Civil War memory and the Lost Cause. opposed
• Jefferson Davis 1808–1889
  President of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory. defeated