Her commercial service ended on 15 January 1862 when Confederate Major General Mansfield Lovell seized her at New Orleans along with 13 other steamers for use as a blockade runner. No continuous record of her operations during the next year is extant, but sporadic reports suggest that the ship carried cotton from New Orleans and Mobile to Havana and returned to those ports with war materiel.
Gaps exist in our knowledge of changes in the vessel's owners, name, and registry.
In any case on 28 October 1862, the side-wheeler was operating under a '. . The Union screw gunboat immediately set out in pursuit of the stranger, beginning a six-hour chase. Any man bound for Matamoros from Havana and coming within twelve miles of Mobile light has no business to have a steamer. Farragut sent the prize to Philadelphia where she was condemned by admiralty court. The Federal Government purchased her on 23 January 1863.