The U.S. Navy's triumph at Mobile Bay, combined with victorious Federal ground campaigns in Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia, helped reelect Abraham Lincoln and doomed the Confederacy to defeat.
He would go on to share intelligence with the U.S. Navy, fight in 17 naval battles, rise to the rank of major general, overcome illiteracy, publish a newspaper, win state and congressional offices, serve as a U.S. collector of customs and become master of his master’s plantation house. But first he had to hijack a Confederate steamer.
"Our little vessel was lost, and we, in months gone by, had learned to love her, felt a strange pang go through us as we remembered that never more might we tread her deck, or gather in her little cabin at evening."