Civil War Service
While he was serving on the San Jacinto, the Civil War began. He was present when she stopped the British steamship RMS Trent and removed two Confederate agents, an incident that provoked a brief crisis in U.S. relations with Great Britain, known as the Trent Affair.
From late 1861 Breese commanded part of the flotilla of mortar schooners that helped capture New Orleans in April 1862.
Promoted to lieutenant commander in mid-1862, he served with Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter on the Mississippi River and off the Atlantic Coast for most of the rest of the conflict, distinguishing himself during the siege of Vicksburg, in the land assault on Fort Fisher, and as Porter's Fleet Captain.
Read more about this topic: Kidder Breese
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or service:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“Barnard’s greatest war service ... was the continuance of full-scale instruction in the liberal arts ... It was Barnard’s responsibility to keep alive in the minds of young people the great liberal tradition of the past and the study of philosophy, of history, of Greek.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)