Robert J. Freeman (1837-1873) was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and was serving as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy when the Civil War broke out. Freeman resigned his commission and accepted an appointment as assistant surgeon in the Confederate States Navy on August 20, 1861. He served on the CSS Atlanta from 1862 until the Atlanta was captured by the USS Weehawken on June 17, 1863. He served on the CSS Palmetto State from 1863-1864 and was taken prisoner when the ship was surrendered on May 4, 1865, in Mobile, Alabama. Freeman mustered out of the Confederate States Navy on May 4, 1865, and applied for a presidential pardon in June of that year. He died of yellow fever in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 22, 1873.

The CSS Atlanta was built in Scotland in 1861 as the merchant steamship Fingal and served as a blockade runner at Savannah Georgia. It was converted to an ironclad and renamed CSS Atlanta in 1862 and was captured by the USS Weehawken in 1863. The captured ship was commissioned the USS Atlanta in 1864 and supported the operations of Union General Ulysses S. Grant on the James River in Virginia.