In December, 1864, he commanded the fleet which bombarded Fort Fisher. After a terrific assault the fort was captured January 13, 1865, and Wilmington, the last Confederate port, was closed. Porter received another, his fourth, vote of thanks from Congress, and in 1866 was made vice-admiral. On Farragut's death, in 1870, he was immediately appointed to succeed him as admiral, and held the rank until his death, on February 13, 1891.[Back to Contents]
GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI
(1807-1882)
Garibaldi has not left the world without some account of his birth, parentage, and early life. Not a little of his great, naïve, and enthusiastic character may be studied in those Memoirs, of which his eccentric friend, Alexander Dumas, published a free translation. He was born July 22, 1807. He was a native of Nice, a city inhabited by a mongrel race, but himself sprung from a purely Italian family The name of Garibaldi, common enough throughout North Italy, betokens old Lombard descent. He first saw light, as he states, in the very house and room where, forty-nine years before, Masséna was born. His father, Domenico, had come from Chiavari, in the Riviera di Levante; he gives his mother's name Rosa Raguindo. Garibaldi's father and grandfather were seamen, and he took to the sea as his native element, developing great strength and skill as a swimmer, an accomplishment which enabled him to save drowning men on several memorable occasions. For what book learning he had he seems to have been indebted to the desultory lessons of priestly schoolmasters under the direction of his mother. Of this latter he always spoke with great tenderness, acknowledging that "to her inspiration he owed his patriotic feelings," and stating that "in his greatest dangers by land and sea his imagination always conjured up the picture of the pious woman prostrated at the feet of the Most High interceding for the safety of her beloved."
In early life he embarked in his father's merchant vessel, a brig, and in that and other craft he made frequent voyages to Odessa, Rome, and Constantinople. Soon after the revolutionary movements of 1831 he was at Marseilles, where he fell in with Mazzini, busy at that time with the organization of "Young Italy," and with the preparations for an invasion of Italy by sea, which, upon Mazzini's expulsion from Marseilles, was attempted at Geneva, and directed against the Savoy frontier. The Savoy expedition turned out an egregious failure, the blame of which Garibaldi, on Mazzini's statement, throws on the Polish General Ramorino's treachery. Garibaldi himself, who had embarked on board the royal frigate Eurydice to gain possession of that vessel by a mutiny of the crew, being off Genoa, and hearing of a plot to storm the barracks of the Carabinieri, landed in the town to join it; but the attack upon the barracks miscarried, and he, not daring to go back to his ship, saw himself irreparably compromised, fled to Nice, and thence crossed the Var and found himself an exile at Marseilles. Here he betook himself again to his sea life, sailed for the Black Sea and for Tunis, and at last on board the Nageur, of Nantes, for Rio de Janeiro.
In the commentaries before alluded to Garibaldi gives the fullest particulars of the exploits by which he rose to distinction beyond the Atlantic during the twelve years elapsing from his leaving Europe in 1836 to his return to Italy in 1848. It is the romance of his career, and will some day be wrought into an epic blending the charms of the Odyssey with those of the Iliad—a battle and a march being the theme of the eventful tale almost from beginning to end.
Garibaldi took service with the Republic of Rio Grande do Sul, a vast territory belonging to Brazil, then in open rebellion and war against that empire. He took the command of a privateer's boat with a crew of twelve men, to which he gave the name of Mazzini, and by the aid of which he soon helped himself to a larger and better-armed vessel, a prize taken from the enemy. In his many encounters with the Imperial or Brazilian party the hero bought experience both of wonderfully propitious and terribly adverse fortune, and had every imaginable variety of romantic adventure and hair-breadth escapes. He was severely wounded, taken prisoner, and in one instance at Gualeguay, in the Argentine territory, he found himself in the power of one Leonardo Millan, a type of Spanish South American brutality, by whom he was savagely struck in the face with a horsewhip, submitted to several hours' rack and torture, and thrown into a dungeon in which his sufferings were soothed by the ministration of that "angel of charity," a woman, by name Madame Alleman.
Escaping from his tormentor by the intervention of the Governor of Gualeguay, Paolo Echague, Garibaldi crossed from the territories of the Plate into those of the Rio Grande, and faithful to the cause of that republic, he fought with better success, winning battles, storming fortresses, standing his ground with a handful of men, or even single-handed, against incredible odds, beating strong squadrons with a few small vessels, giving through all proofs of the rarest disinterestedness, humanity, and generosity, disobeying orders to sack and ravage vanquished cities, and exercising that mixture of authority and glamour over his followers which almost enabled him to dispense with the ties of stern rule and discipline. At last, after losing a flotilla in a hurricane on the coast of Santa Caterina, where he landed wrecked and forlorn, having seen his bravest and most cherished Italian friends shot down or drowned, he fell in with his Anita—not, apparently, the first fair one for whom he had a passing fancy—with whom he united his destinies, for better for worse, in life and till death, in some off-hand manner, about which he is reticent and mysterious. Anita turned out almost as great and daring and long-enduring a being as her heroic mate, and was by his side in all fights by land and sea, till the fortunes of the Republic of Rio Grande declined, when, after giving birth to her first-born, Menotti Garibaldi, September 16, 1840, she went with that infant and his father through unheard of hardships and dangers in the disastrous retreat of Las Antas; when at last, Garibaldi, beginning to feel the responsibilities of a growing family, and despairing of the issues of an ill-conducted war, took leave of his Republican friends at Rio Grande and went for a short respite in his adventurous career to Montevideo.
After trying on the journey to find employment as a cattle-driver, Garibaldi settled at Montevideo in the capacity of a general broker and teacher of mathematics; but war having broken out between the Republic of the Uruguay and Buenos Ayres, the Condottiere was solicited to draw his sword for the former state which afforded him hospitality, and was trusted with the command of a little squadron destined to operate on the Parana River against a largely superior Argentine force. This expedition was contrived by enemies high in power in the Montevidean Government, who, jealous of the reputation won by Garibaldi at Rio Grande, vainly plotted to have him assassinated with his friend Anzani, and hoped to rid themselves of him by exposing him to dangers from which it seemed impossible that he could extricate himself. Garibaldi, however, made the best of his desperate position, and escaped, not only with his life, but also with "honor—the only thing that was not lost."