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Up for sale a RARE! "Civil War Rear Admiral" Francis J Higginson Signed Check Dated 1903.
ES-3904D
Francis John Higginson (July
19, 1843 – September 12, 1931) was an officer in the United States Navy during
the American Civil War and Spanish–American War. He
rose to the rank of rear admiral and
was the last commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron and
first commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Fleet. Higginson
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 19, 1843. He was raised in Deerfield, appointed as an acting midshipman on September 21, 1857 and entered the United States Naval
Academy, from which he graduated in 1861, when he was promoted Civil War broke
out in April 1861, and Higginson's first assignment after graduation was to
the screw frigate USS Colorado,
which was operating under the command of Captain Theodorus Bailey in
the West Gulf Blockading
Squadron off the United States Gulf Coast as
part of the Union blockade of
the Confederate States of
America. While aboard Colorado, Higginson was wounded on
September 14, 1861 while participating in a raid against Pensacola, Florida, in which a party from Colorado captured
and destroyed was believed to be undergoing
conversion for service as a Confederate privateer, and spiked a gun of a Confederate artillery battery at the Pensacola Navy 1862, Higginson became signal midshipman and
aide to Bailey aboard the gunboat USS Cayuga, and was aboard Cayuga serving
in that capacity as Bailey commanded a gunboat division during the Battle of
Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi River in Louisiana on April 24, 1862. During the battle, the squadron of Rear Admiral David Glasgow Jackson and Fort St. Philip to break through Confederate defenses on
the Mississippi and move up to New Orleans, Louisiana,
where Higginson participated in action against the Confederate artillery
batteries at Chalmette, Louisiana, and
the capture of New August 1, 1862, Higginson became executive officer of the steamer USS Vixen in the South Atlantic Blockading
Squadron and later a watch officer aboard was heavily involved in
operations against the defenses of Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. On the night of September 8–9, 1863, he
commanded a division of boats in an unsuccessful attack on Fort Sumter by a force of U.S. Navy and United States Marine Corps personnel
under the overall command of the commanding H. Stevens Jr., and United States Army Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore commended
him for his efficient service in command of picket launches operating at night inside Morris Island between Fort Sumter and Fort Gregg. He was the executive officer of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley sank her with a spar torpedo off Charleston, South
Carolina, on February 17, 1864, the first time in history that a submarine sank
a ship. He was executive officer of the participated in the search for the Confederate States Navy commerce raider CSS Tallahassee in August 1864. He became
executive officer of the monitor USS Passaic,
and was aboard her for her bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1865.