USS Tallapoosa, a 1173-ton Sassacus class "double-ender" gunboat built at the Boston Navy Yard, was commissioned in September 1864. In early November, while participating in the extensive search for the Confederate raider Tallahassee, she was seriously damaged by a storm and had to return to Boston for repairs. Tallapoosa spent the rest of the Civil War with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. In January 1865, she helped salvage equipment from USS San Jacinto which had been stranded in the Bahamas.

Tallapoosa remained in the Gulf of Mexico area until 1867, when she was laid up. She returned to active duty in 1869 in the role of dispatch vessel. The next year, she carried Admiral David Glasgow Farragut on his last voyage, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Training service at the Naval Academy followed in 1872 and in 1873 she was assigned to transport work.

In 1874-75, Tallapoosa was extensively rebuilt, emerging with a reconfigured hull and extended superstructure. She served as a dispatch vessel for nearly a decade, until sunk off Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, in August 1874 in a collision with the schooner James S. Lowell. Raised and repaired, Tallapoosa recommissioned in January 1886 with additional superstructure. She was sent to the South Atlantic Squadron in July of that year and remained in that area until sold at Montevideo, Uruguay, in March 1892.