Partially incomplete, she was moved from Dubuque—via Cairo, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana—to the Revenue Cutter Service Depot near Baltimore, Maryland, where she was completed and placed in commission on 30 June 1896.

[2] Windom was the first cruising Revenue Service cutter to employ triple-expansion machinery and a fully watertight hull including transverse and longitudinal bulkheads.

[1] In March 1898, with war against Spain looming just over the horizon, President William McKinley began the process of preparing for the fight.

On the 24th, he issued the executive order instructing the Revenue Cutter Service to cooperate with the Navy for the duration of the crisis.

During that time, she cut the Cienfuegos cable, the Spanish colonial government's only link with the outside world; and, on 12 May, she helped to cover the withdrawal of a Navy boat expedition.

At a critical point in that action, the cutter closed the enemy shore and silenced the Spanish battery and briefly dispersed their infantry allowing the harassed boats to reach safety.

[1] From the fall of 1898 to the summer of 1906, Windom operated out of Baltimore, cruising the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and occasionally venturing out into the Atlantic in the vicinity of the Virginia Capes.

She cruised the entire Gulf Coast from Texas to Key West over the next 18 months enforcing navigation laws and attending several regattas.

After war broke out in Europe in August 1914, the cutter took on the added responsibility of enforcing America's neutrality laws.

[1][4] The United States' declaration of war on the Central Powers once again brought the cutter under Navy Department control on 6 April 1917.