Du Pont, Samuel Francis

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Albert Victor du Pont, class of 1818, relative
Full name
Samuel Francis Du Pont
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
North
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
1
No. of Children
0
Family
Victor Marie du Pont (father), Gabrielle Josephine de la Fite (mother),Sophie Madeleine du Pont (wife, 1833)
Occupation
Military
Relation to Slavery
White non-slaveholder
Military
US military (Pre-Civil War)
Union Navy

Samuel Francis Du Pont (American National Biography)

Scholarship
In 1863 the Abraham Lincoln administration, in desperate political need of a victory, ordered Du Pont to attack Charleston. Du Pont's civilian superiors, unfamiliar with Charleston Harbor's hydrography, did not understand that the tactics of Port Royal or New Orleans could not be used in Charleston, where no room was available to maneuver. He doubted that a purely naval attack relying on monitors, which mounted only two guns and were offensively weak, could succeed against miles of fortifications and obstructions. On 7 April 1863, from 2:50 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., nine Federal ironclads with twenty-three guns attacked Charleston and were repulsed. The U.S. Navy could not pass Fort Sumter. Du Pont was relieved by Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren on 6 July 1863. Du Pont was upset that Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who ordered the attack, refused to share blame for the worst Federal naval defeat of the war. …Du Pont, who had always been extremely loyal to associates and subordinates (even if they were unpopular in Washington), was too independent to quietly accept Welles's version of Charleston, which placed all blame on the admiral. Politicians who supported the secretary of the navy would not defend Du Pont, and the public--who had hailed Du Pont as a hero after Port Royal--received a one-sided account of Charleston from the Navy Department. But among naval officers Du Pont remained highly respected.
Ralph Kirshner, "Du Pont, Samuel Francis," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00329.html.
Chicago Style Entry Link
Symonds, Craig L. Lincoln and his Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. view record
How to Cite This Page: "Du Pont, Samuel Francis," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/12827.