Although intended for forthcoming operations against Confederate fortifications guarding Mobile Bay with Rear Admiral David Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron, Tecumseh was temporarily assigned to the James River Flotilla in April 1864.

The Smithsonian Institution surveyed her wreck in 1967 with the intent of raising it, but ultimately decided against the project when proffered funding was withdrawn.

A "rifle screen" of 1⁄2-inch (13 mm) armor 3 feet (0.9 m) high was installed on the top of the turret to protected the crew against Confederate snipers based on a suggestion by Commander Tunis A. M.

[9] After commissioning, the ship was ordered to join the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron at Newport News and arrived there on 28 April.

On 21 June, Commander Craven spotted a line of breastworks that the enemy was building at Howlett's Farm and the ship opened fire at the workers.

[7] Two days after the battle, Tecumseh sailed down the James for Norfolk, Virginia, but ran aground en route when her wire steering ropes broke after having been burned halfway through by the heat of her boilers.

[11] On 5 July, the ship got underway for Pensacola, Florida to join the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, towed by the side-wheel gunboats Augusta and Eutaw.

She and her sister Manhattan were to keep the ironclad ram CSS Tennessee away from the vulnerable wooden ships while they were passing Fort Morgan and then sink her.

By 07:30 Tecumseh was about 600 yards (550 m) away from Tennessee and Craven did not think that he could intercept the Confederate ironclad before Hartford entered the channel unless he passed through the field of "torpedoes", as mines were called at the time, because of his ship's poor maneuverability.

[7] Craven and the pilot, John Collins, arrived at the foot of the ladder leading to the main deck simultaneously with water up to their waists.

[20] In the mid-1960s, the Smithsonian Institution formed the Tecumseh Project Team, which was intended to raise the ship as the centerpiece of a planned National Armed Forces Museum Park in Washington, D. C. The team found the wreck in February 1967, capsized and buried just off Fort Morgan, but the primary donor was forced to rescind the funding, so the project was suspended.

[21] "In a 1993 survey, archaeologists from East Carolina University reported the hull to be covered by a calcareous crust with only nominal surface deterioration present.

"[22] In 1974, Jack Friend – a Mobile naval historian – was commissioned to examine the feasibility of raising Tecumseh and concluded that it would cost an estimated $10 million.

[23] Divers from the Smithsonian Institution recovered an anchor, dishes from the ship's dining hall and a variety of other artifacts during their 1967 expedition.

The wreck site is marked and under United States Coast Guard surveillance pending continued preservation efforts.