The DICTIONARY OF TRANSPORTS AND COMBATANT VESSELS indicates that the GENERAL LYON was a screw steamer of 1026 tons chartered on March 24, 1864, and was "one of ten transports sent from the Army of the James at City Point in November of 1864 with a provisional division of troops bound to New York, their mission being to contain threats of civil unrest on the eve of the presidential elections and to guard against the threat of Confederate raiders coming out of Canada. Part of the failed first expedition to take Fort Fisher in December of 1864. Participated as a troopship in the successful assault against Fort Fisher, North Carolina, during January 1865. In early March of 1865, she was employed as a troop carrier transporting released prisoners from Wilmington, North Carolina, north to the Chesapeake." She was burned March 31, 1865, off the coast of North Carolina. The information comes from several sources, including the Official Records of the Army, series 1, volume 46 and the Official Records of the Navy, series 1, volume 11, as well as Record Group 92, Quartermaster Records and the House of Representative Executive Document No. 337.