USS Alabama was a 1,261 long tons (1,281 t) wooden side-wheel steamer, built at New York City in 1850 and operated thereafter in commercial service in the western Atlantic.

The U.S. Army used her as a transport during the spring and early summer of 1861, and she was purchased by the Navy at the beginning of August of that year for conversion to a warship.

Commissioned as USS Alabama at the end of September 1861, in the next month she was attached to the large naval force preparing to seize Port Royal, South Carolina, for use as a base for blockading the southern seacoast.

She was sent north in late July 1863 in an effort to control an outbreak of yellow fever among her crew and did not resume active service until May 1864.

Late in 1864 and in January 1865, Alabama supported the attacks that finally captured Fort Fisher, thus closing the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, as a source of supplies and commerce for the Confederate cause.