On June 23, 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of the Navy George Robeson in response to the Virginius Incident ordered the of the American Civil War laid down (scrapped, redesigned, and rebuilt).
Because of the level of disrepair on the original Puritan, a new Puritan was built by John Roach & Sons of Chester, Pennsylvania contracted out by Secretary Robeson and completed by the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York.