Louis Kempff

Background

Louis Kempff was born on October 11, 1841 in Belleville, Illinois, United States, the son of Friedrich and Henrietta Kempff.

Education

Kempff entered the Naval Academy in 1857 and was detached in April 1861.

Career

Kempff started his active service in May 1861 and was ordered to the Vandalia on the Charleston blockade. After taking a captured schooner to New York he was sent to the Wabash, took part in the attack on the forts at Port Royal, and commanded a howitzer in the boat attacks on Port Royal Ferry and Fernandina, Florida--all before he was warranted as a midshipman in 1862. In that year he was sent to the Susquehanna, was present at the recapture of Norfolk, and engaged in blockade duty off Mobile. In 1863 he served on the gunboat Sonoma off the Sabine River and in the next year was on the Connecticut off Wilmington. The close of the war found him on the gunboat Suwanee in the Pacific, the region in which, except for a short period at the War College, he served the rest of his career. This service involved duty as executive officer on the Portsmouth, Independence, Mohican, Saranac, and California, various posts at the Mare Island Navy Yard, and command of the Alert, 1881-1882, of the Adams, 1885-1888, and of the Monterey, 1893-1895.

In 1899 Kempff was made a rear admiral and assigned to duty as second in command of the Asiatic Squadron. In 1900, during the Boxer troubles, he was the senior American naval officer off Taku, where an international fleet was assembled to protect the lives of foreigners in northern China. Under his orders sailors and marines were landed, but when the other foreign admirals demanded of the Chinese the surrender of the Taku forts, fearing that the Boxers would seize them and thus be able to interrupt communication with Tien Tsin and Peking, Kempff declined to join in the demand. His decision was based on his belief that the Chinese imperial authorities had not as yet committed any act of war and was in accordance with his instructions from Washington and the general policy of the United States toward China. In the bombardment that followed on June 17, the American gunboat Monocacy, on which a number of foreign women and children had taken refuge, was hit by a stray shot from the forts but did not return the fire. News of the attack reached Peking that same day and was probably responsible for the opposition offered by Chinese imperial troops to the advance of the allied relief column toward Peking; but it is doubtful whether the conflict could have been much longer delayed. Kempff cooperated with the other foreign commanders in later operations and was commended by the Navy Department for his refusal to join in the attack on the forts.

When he returned to the United States, he was given a complimentary banquet in San Francisco by friends of China, at which the Chinese minister, Wu Ting Fang, was a speaker; and his friends even introduced a resolution of thanks into Congress, but it never came to a vote. After this cruise Kempff served as commandant of the Pacific Naval District until he was retired in 1903.

Achievements

• Louis Kempff gained a national reputation for his service as an officer in the United States Navy during American Civil War and in the events of the Boxer Rebellion in China.

Connections

In 1873 at Fair Oaks, California, Kempff married Cornelia Reese, adopted daughter of Thomas H. Selby.

Father:

Friedrich Kempff

Mother:

Henrietta Kempff

Spouse:

Cornelia Reese

References

• China and the Occident: the origin and development of the Boxer movement
• The New American Navy, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)
• The Boxer Rebellion, a Political and Diplomatic Review (Classic Reprint)