Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,932
By This is the grave of David Farragut.
Born just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee in 1801, James Farragut grew up in a naval family. His father George had immigrated from Spain and was a naval office in the American Revolution. Shortly after David was born, he accepted a position in New Orleans. That meant yellow fever, which claimed David’s mother in 1807. Now dealing with being a single father and on the water a lot, George sent David to his superior officer during the Revolution, David Porter. He would rename himself David in honor of Porter. He was already going to sea with Porter in 1810, just a kid. Porter was still active in the US Navy, so the 9 year old Farragut was given the rank of “boy.”
And really, the kind of responsibilities given to this kid is really an unbelievable story. He was a prize master by the age of 11. Porter’s sailors had captured a British ship, early in the War of 1812. He gave the 11 year old command of the ship to get it back to an American port. I know that discipline on ships was ironclad, but an 11 year old in charge? He actively participated in the capture of the HMS Alert in 1812. In 1814, he was wounded in a naval battle with the British off the coast of Chile. He was captured here, but was freed after the war. He was 13 years old.
Farragut was given his first official command in 1823, part of the so-called Mosquito Fleet to fight piracy in the Caribbean. The story of the next couple of decades isn’t really that exciting–the Navy didn’t have a heck of a lot to do. But Farragut steadily rose through the ranks. By 1847, he was a commander and was assigned to the Mexican War, where he commanded the Saratoga in a blockade off Tuxpan, serving under Matthew Perry. Yellow fever wrecked his crew, but since Farragut almost certainly had survived it when it took his mother and yellow fever provides lifelong immunity for the half of those who survived it, that was not going to get in his way. If there’s one thing Farragut wasn’t concerned about, it was losing lots of his men to yellow fever. That was the only option if he was going to run his operation. In the 1850s, with the Navy very slowly modernizing, Farragut was assigned to create the Mare Island Navy Yard near San Francisco, necessary as the Navy now had a role to play in defending the nation’s far western possessions with no reasonable to cross by land in a reasonable amount of time. In 1854, the Pierce administration brought him back to Washington to become assistant inspector of ordinance at the Naval ammo yard in Norfolk.
Now, Farragut was a southerner by birth and a southerner by raising, at least when he wasn’t on the water. But he was an American and he found the treasonous talk by the South sickening. Again, not all southerners committed treason in defense of slavery and narratives that Robert E. Lee, to name the most prominent example, had no choice but to follow their state are complete bullshit. So Farragut immediately announced his support of the Union in crushing treason, also moving to New York at this time. He was given command of the attack to take New Orleans. He led the bombardment of the city’s defenses until it surrendered and the Union took back the mouth of the Mississippi River, an absolutely critical early victory that seriously hamstrung the Confederate ability to get its cotton to Europe.
Farragut’s contributions at New Orleans were so lauded that Congress created the new rank of rear admiral to give it to him in 1862. Before this, there was no such thing as an admiral in the American Navy, as that was seen as a vestige of evil Europe. He tried to take Vicksburg, but that didn’t go so well and he was forced to withdraw. He also screwed up at the siege of Port Hudson and forced the Army under Nathaniel Banks to take it themselves, which was a dent in Farragut’s reputation. It didn’t help that the military suffered its highest casualty rate of the entire war at Port Hudson, which given casualty rates during the Civil War…yikes. Port Hudson was in Louisiana and was the second to last spot on the Mississippi to be held by Confederates. The idea was for Banks to take it and then go reinforce Grant at Vicksburg. It was certainly not an easy fight. The smoke from both sides firing meant that two of the ships ran aground because they couldn’t see their way through the river, not the easiest thing to navigate in the best of times, as Mark Twain famously wrote about in Life on the Mississippi. In fact, things got so bad for the ships that Banks had to maneuver to allow Farragut to retreat back to Baton Rouge. Of course, the Union eventually took it and then Vicksburg, but the cost was very high.
Farragut was able to rehabilitate himself with his key work in taking Mobile in 1864. The Confederates had mined the heck out of the harbor, but he ordered Mobile Bay taken anyway. Mines were easier to see then than they are today–they were tethered back then. In fact, Farragut was so determined to see the mines that he climbed the mast of his own ship, making him an easy target for sharpshooters. His men convinced him to come down and not die. He then took Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines that defended Mobile. When American troops occupied Mobile, the Confederacy lost its last major port.
After the Civil War, Congress created the position of full Admiral in order to honor Farragut. He took that position and remained in the Navy until his death, in 1870. He was 69 years old. That was a heart attack, while he was on vacation in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
David Farragut is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.
I lived in east Tennessee in the late 90s. There, everything is named after Farragut. That’s interesting given his Union support, but of course east Tennessee was pretty divided between the Union and the traitors. Still, given the triumph of white supremacy and the general Confederate sympathy there and everywhere for decades after the war, I’m slightly surprised by this fact.
If you would like this series to visit other Civil War naval figures, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Frederick Engle is in Burlington, New Jersey and John Almy is in Washington, D.C. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.