The Second Admiral: A Life of David Dixon Porter 1813-1891.

WEST JR, Richard S. [William T. Sherman].

$400.00

Item Number: 145739

New York: Coward-McCann, Inc, 1937.

First edition of this biography of one of the most distinguished admirals in the history of the U. S. Navy; from the library of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman. Octavo, original cloth, frontispiece portrait of Admiral David Nixon Porter, illustrated with photographs, maps, and engravings. P. T. Sherman’s bookplate to the front free endpaper beneath his ownership signature. In near fine condition. General William Tecumseh Sherman’s son P. T. Sherman was a lawyer in New York, specializing in labor and insurance, and was elected a member of the New York Board of Alderman in the late 1880s. In the early 1900s, he was appointed the New York Commissioner of Labor. He transferred his library to his niece, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman through his eldest daughter, Maria “Minnie” Ewing Sherman Fitch, before he died. Until now, the book was held at the family estate in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

David Dixon Porter was a United States Navy admiral who worked to raise the standards of the U.S. Navy as Superintendent of the Naval Academy. During the Civil War, Porter commanded an independent flotilla of mortar boats at the capture of New Orleans and was later advanced to the rank of acting rear admiral in command of the Mississippi River Squadron, which cooperated with the army under Major General Ulysses S. Grant in the Vicksburg Campaign. After the fall of Vicksburg, he led the naval forces in the difficult Red River Campaign in Louisiana. Transferred from the interior to the Atlantic coast late in 1864, Porter led the U.S. Navy in the joint assaults on Fort Fisher, the final significant naval action of the Civil War.