Later, he was 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.

Late in 1864, Porter was transferred from the interior to the Atlantic coast, where he led the U.S. Navy in the joint assaults on Fort Fisher, the final significant naval action of the war.

The family had strong naval traditions; the elder Porter's father, also named David, had been captain of a Massachusetts vessel in the American Revolutionary War, as had his uncle Samuel.

The boy's mother died in 1808 when he was seven, and his father George Farragut, a U.S. naval officer in the American Revolution and friend of David Porter Sr., was unable to care for all his children.

He had a distinguished career as David G. Farragut, serving as the first man to attain the new rank of admiral, instituted by the U.S. Congress after the American Civil War.

Captain Porter elected to attack, and soon forced the flotilla to seek refuge in the harbor at Mariel, 30 miles (48 km) west of Havana.

[15] Spitfire was at Vera Cruz when General Winfield Scott led the amphibious assault on the city, which was shielded by a series of forts and the ancient Castle of San Juan de Ulloa.

The next morning, Spitfire and other vessels taking part in the bombardment followed the channel that Porter had laid out and took up positions inside the harbor, where they were able to pound the forts and castle.

Secretary of State William H. Seward, Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the US Army, and Porter devised a plan for the relief of Fort Pickens.

When the other vessels assigned to the effort showed up, the South Carolina troops at Charleston began to bombard Fort Sumter, and the Civil War was on.

As he wrote,[26] In detaching the Powhatan from the Sumter expedition and giving the command to Porter, Mr. Seward extricated that officer from Secession influences, and committed him at once, and decisively, to the Union cause.In late 1861, the Navy Department began to develop plans to open the Mississippi River.

For this Porter, by this time advanced to rank of commander, was given the responsibility of organizing a flotilla of some twenty mortar boats that would participate in the reduction of the forts defending the city from the south.

[29] Following orders from the Navy Department, Farragut took his fleet upstream to capture other strongpoints on the river, with the aim of complete possession of the Mississippi.

The mortars suppressed the Rebel artillery well enough that Farragut's ships could pass the batteries at Vicksburg and link up with a Union flotilla coming down from the north.

On July 8, the bombardment ceased when Porter was ordered to Hampton Roads to assist in Major General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign.

The problem was that the commandant of the gunboat flotilla, Flag Officer Charles H. Davis, had not shown the initiative that the Navy Department wanted, so he had to be removed.

"[35] Historian John D. Winters, in his The Civil War in Louisiana, describes Porter as having "possessed the qualities of abundant energy, recklessness, resourcefulness, and fighting spirit needed for the trying role ahead.

[43] Although the fleet made no major offensive contributions to the campaign after Grand Gulf, it remained important in its secondary role of keeping the blockade against the city.

The ostensible purpose was to extend Union control into Texas,[46] but Banks was influenced by numerous speculators to convert the campaign into little more than a raid to seize cotton.

[citation needed] Admiral Porter was not in favor; he thought that the next objective of his fleet should be to capture Mobile, but he received direct orders from Washington to cooperate with Banks.

The task was made difficult by falling water levels in the river, but he ultimately got most out, with the help of heroic efforts by some of the soldiers who stayed to protect the fleet.

[48] By late summer 1864, Wilmington, North Carolina, was the only Atlantic port open for running the Union blockade, and the Navy Department began to plan to close it.

Butler proposed that the fort could be flattened by exploding a ship filled with gunpowder near it, and Porter accepted the idea; if successful, the scheme would avoid a protracted siege or its alternative, a frontal assault.

Porter imposed new methods of bombardment this time: each ship was assigned a specific target, with intent to destroy the enemy's guns rather than to knock down the walls.

After the Confederate capital of Richmond was captured by U.S. forces, Porter toured the city on foot, accompanying U.S. President Abraham Lincoln with several armed bodyguards.

He fondly recalled the events in his 1885 book, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, where he described witnessing scores of many freed slaves rushing to get a glimpse of Lincoln.

They admired the president as a hero and credited him for their emancipation; they were kissing his clothing and singing odes to him: Twenty years have passed since that event; it is almost too new in history to make a great impression, but the time will come when it will loom up as one of the greatest of man's achievements, and the name of Abraham Lincoln — who of his own will struck the shackles from the limbs of four millions of people — will be honored thousands of years from now as man's name was never honored before.

[...] The scene was so touching I hated to disturb it, yet we could not stay there all day; we had to move on; so I requested the patriarch to withdraw from about the President with his companions and let us pass on.A few weeks after his visit to Virginia, Lincoln was assassinated.

The academy, despite having been established to train naval personnel, was neglected and underfunded by Congress, with a reputation for producing cadets who were poorly educated on their duties, prone to misbehavior, and lacking the professionalism expected in the Navy.

Porter used his influence with the secretary to push through several policies to shape the navy as he wanted it; in the process, he made a new set of enemies who either were harmed by his actions or resented his blunt methods.