Lawrence Rousseau, a New Orleans native, spent over five decades at sea, rising to captain in the United States Navy by 1837 after joining as a midshipman in 1809. At the outbreak of the Civil War he resigned his federal commission and was commissioned a captain in the Confederate States Navy, helping organize naval defenses at New Orleans before the city’s fall in 1862. He served the Confederacy until its collapse, surrendering at Nanna Hubba Bluff, Alabama, in May 1865, and received a presidential pardon.