Short answers, pulled from the story.
Andrew Hull Foote was an American naval officer born on the 12th of September, 1806, in New Haven, Connecticut. During the Civil War, he commanded the Western Gunboat Flotilla and led Union gunboats to victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in early 1862. He received the Thanks of Congress twice and was among the first naval officers promoted to the newly created rank of rear admiral.
Foote commanded the Western Gunboat Flotilla at Fort Henry on the Tennessee River in early February 1862. He cooperated with General Ulysses S. Grant and successfully forced the Confederate garrison to surrender despite heavy damage to one of his gunboats. When Confederate commander Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman sent out a flag of truce to ask the terms of surrender, Foote replied: "No sir, your surrender will be unconditional!"
Foote published Africa and the American Flag in 1854, a 390-page book drawn from his service suppressing the slave trade off the African coast between 1849 and 1851. The book covered African geography, the customs of African peoples, American colonies in Africa, and the evils of the slave trade. It established Foote as a voice on the Abolitionist circuit.
Foote died in New York in 1863 while traveling to take command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. He was struck down by Bright's disease at age 56. He was interred at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.
Foote organized a Temperance Society aboard his ship during his antebellum naval service. That effort grew into a broader movement that ended the United States Navy's long-standing practice of supplying grog to its personnel.
Three ships carried the name USS Foote in his honor. Civil War Fort Foote on the Potomac, now a National Park, was named for him on the 17th of September, 1863. Foote Street NE and Foote Place in Washington, DC also bear his name, part of a series of streets named for Civil War figures.