Description
Captain John McGowan (1805 -91), a well-known U.S. revenue marine officer, lived in Baltimore at the time of Douglass's escape from slavery; he had recently been promoted to captain. His career included service both as a revenue cutter captain, aboard the Polk, and in the Navy in both the Mexican and Civil Wars. At the outbreak of the Civil War, McGowan gained the national spotlight briefly as the commander of the Star of the West, a merchant steamer. With Fort Sumter under siege, President Buchanan ordered McGowan to resupply the fort but the rebel batteries in Charleston's harbor cut off their progress. His ship was the first to take rebel fire in the war. His son, John. Jr., followed his father into the Navy, advancing to the rank of rear admiral by 1904. Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 January 1891; Ellen McGowan Biddle, Reminiscences of a Soldier`s Wife, (1907; Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2002), x, xi, 73; Steven D. Glazer, "John McGowan," in New Jersey Goes to War: Biographies of 150 New Jersyans, ed. Joseph G. Bilby (Hightstown, N.J., 2010), 80.
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