OCR Text |
Show Uisfoncal Wighlights h Scott Idaho (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) The First U. S. Admiral JULY 4 this year was more than just another Independence day for the little city of Hastings on Hudson, N. Y. Combined with it was the observance of Farragut day, for the next day, July 5, marked the 140th anniversary of the birth of the man who was its most distinguished citizen David Glasgow Glas-gow Farragut, the first man who ever held the rank of admiral in the United States navy. Although Farragut was born near Knoxville, Tenn., on July 5, 1801, it was from a little cottage in Hastings Hast-ings on Hudson that he went forth to win his greatest fame as a naval commander. He was living there in 1861, awaiting a call to duty, when he was summoned to Washington and started on the career which was to make him the victor in two of the most important battles nt the Civil war and to place him in our galaxy of naval heroes along with John Paul Jones, Isaac Hull and Oliver Hazard Perry. And all this he accomplished after he was 60 years old! Few, if any, American naval officers offi-cers have had as long and as distinguished dis-tinguished a record as Farragut. Adopted by a famous naval officer, Capt. David D. Porter, at the age of eight, young Farragut was given the appointment of midshipman before he was 10 years old. He served on the frigate Essex, which captured several prizes at the outbreak of the War of 1812 with England, and ADMIRAL D. G. FARRAGUT at the tender age of 12, Midshipman Midship-man Farragut was made prize-master of one of the captured ships. By the time of the outbreak of the War with Mexico in 1846, Farragut had risen to the rank of commander. command-er. He Immediately applied for command of a ship and was finally given the sloop Saratoga. In it he arrived there too late to take part in the capture of Vera Cruz, which had already fallen to the American land forces. During the rest of the war he had to content himself with blockade duty. However, greater glory awaited him 16 years later and the story of his part in saving the Union is one that is familiar to every American schoolboy. For it was Farragut who, aboard his flagship, the Hartford, took his fleet up the Mississippi, past the thundering guns of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, and captured New Orleans in the spring of 1862. The Immediate effect of that victory was to change the purpose pur-pose of Emperor Napoleon III of France, who was about to recognize the Confederacy and take measures to raise the blockade. It was Farragut Far-ragut who ran by the batteries at Port Hudson and helped Gen. N. P. Banks capture that important post in July, 1863, so that Abraham Lincoln Lin-coln was able to write "The Father of Waters now flows unvexed to the sea." And finally it was Farragut who won the great victory of Mobile Bay In 1864 and to the famous sayings of naval heroes, such as John Paul Jones' "I have not yet begun to fight!" and Oliver Hazard Perry's "We have met the enemy and they are ours," added his own immortal "Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead! Full speed!" Stopping the passage of blockade-runners from Mobile and thus closing another main avenue ave-nue of supplies for the Confederacy was Farragut's last important contribution con-tribution to winning the war. By November, 1864, his health had begun to fail and he was ordered home. In December New York gave him a great public reception and presented him with a purse of $50,000 with which to buy a home there. Soon afterwards he was made a vice admiral and on July 25, 1866, congress created the grade of admiral, ad-miral, hitherto unknown in the United Unit-ed States navy, and that rank was given to Farragut He died in Portsmouth, Ports-mouth, N. H., August 14, 1870. Farragut' memory survives in a colossal bronze statue which stands In Farragut square in Washington, D. C. It was made by Vinnie Ream, the famous woman sculptor of Civil war days, and was paid for by congressional con-gressional appropriation. There is also a statue of heroic size executed by Augustus St. Gaudens, in Madison Madi-son square in New York and In the Church of the Incarnation is a marble tablet containing a bas-relief likeness of the man who has been called "the greatest naval commander com-mander the world has ever seen." |