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Today's Featured Biography
David Dixon Porter
 Among the coincidences of naval and military command in the war for the Union, the association of the names of Farragut and Porter, in the important series of operations on the Mississippi, has not escaped attention.
The former, as the reader has seen in the previous sketch, was introduced to the service in his childhood, under the care and protection of Commodore David Porter, and boy as he was, fully shared the adventures and perils of his famous cruise in the Pacific. Nearly fifty years after that event Captain Farragut, in command of the Department of the Gulf, entered the Mississippi in concert with the son of his old commander of the Essex, to vindicate the national honor by the restoration of New Orleans to the Union--a service which was to prove the ability of both officers, and lead them to the highest rank known to the naval service of the United States. Looking into the future, Commodore Porter, the hero of the War of 1812, would hardly have dreamt that the "boy midshipman, who had been introduced to him at New Orleans, would, with two of his own sons, at the end of half a century, receive the highest honors of their country, the reward of the most arduous and perilous services against a domestic foe on the Mississippi."
Of these sons of Commodore Porter, thus distinguished in this field of duty, William D. Porter, the elder, on more than one occasion, in command of the gunboat Essex, recalled not merely the name of his father's vessel, but the cour...
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