1861 Annapolis, MD - Civil War Letter - Ref\'s USS CONSTITUTION & Other News
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1861 Annapolis, MD - Civil War Letter - Ref\'s USS CONSTITUTION & Other News :
$161.50
CIVIL WAR LETTER
This letter was found in the archive of:
Moreau Forrest (January 29, 1841), MD—November 24, 1866, Santa Cruz, West Indies; USN). Forrest was appointed an acting USN midshipman on September 22, 1858, and was immediately ordered to the US Naval Academy. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he left Annapolis to serve the Union on the Atlantic blockade. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on August 1, 1862, and, from that time on, sent two-thirds of his pay to his mother, widowed in 1852.
In January, 1863, Forrest became executive officer of the experimental ironcladKeokuk, which was sunk off Charleston, S.C. in April. In July, he became SABS Flag lieutenant, remaining in that post until October 1864 when he was ordered to assume command of the USMS 11th District in Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee’s “Brown-water navy,” headquartered at Chattanooga, TN. With his Flag in the General Burnside (No. 63), he received considerable commendation for the handling of the four-tinclad Upper Tennessee flotilla during the December 1864-January 1865 Nashville campaign. Once his Western unit was demobilized in the spring of 1865, Forrest returned east where he taught Mathematics briefly at the US Naval Academy and then was was posted to the North Atlantic Squadron in February 1866 and promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander on July 25. — [Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters…pg. 80, by Myron J. Smith, Jr.]
Moreau died at sea of yellow fever while serving on board theUSS Florida. Date of death was 24 November 1866 at the east end of Santa Cruz. He was buried at sea on the same day.
TRANSCRIPTION
Annapolis [Maryland]
April 28, 1861
My dear Madam,
Yours of the 25th posted at this place yesterday was handed to me this morning and I take the first opportunity to inform you if you have not already learned it from your son, that the Naval Academy is removed from here to Newport, Rhode Island. The midshipmen were ordered on board theConstitutionon Thursday of last week & the ship sailed for New York in tow of a powerful steamer on Friday & has by this time probably reached her destination. I do not know what address to give the letter or I would forward it at once by mail, I shall have opportunity to send directly to the ship next week per steamerBalticwhich goes from here on Tuesday to convey to Newport the families of the professors and the apparatus of the school. Should you desire to go on to see your son, I make no doubt that you could secure conveyance in this vessel by application to Capt. Blake. The communication will be opened regularly this week to New York by way of Perryville by a boat running daily from this place with the cars.
I have no doubt of the firmness of your son to his Flag for if he had intended to resign, I should have heard of it through Mr. Graham whom I saw several times on the day of the departure. I feel sadly, I assure you dear Madam, at parting thus with your son whom we have all learned to love. It is one of the sad things about this fearful state of confusion that it is breaking so readily so many ties & bringing desolation on so many interests. When you write to him, please convey to him my assurances of the highest regard. And if you wish to communicate with him through theBalticin any way, either perennially or by sending any package, I beg you to commend my services for that end. Should you come yourself and of the necessity of doing so or not, you are the best judge. I shall be most happy to see you immediately at my house to which any person at the S. Boat dock will direct you.
Very Respectfully your obedient servant, — J. R. Davenport
TERMS
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1861 Annapolis, MD - Civil War Letter - Ref\'s USS CONSTITUTION & Other News :
$161.50