Born in Charleston in 1829, James Madison Seixas was one of Abraham and Rachel Nunez Cardozo Seixas’s five children. Among his many aunts and uncles, he counted Hayman Levy Seixas. At the age of twenty-four, he moved from Charleston to New Orleans, and he would call the city home for the rest of his life. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army, achieving the rank of lieutenant in the 5^th Company of the Battalion Washington Artillery. In October of 1865, just a few months after the war’s end, Seixas married Marie Julia Deslonde, with whom he had eight children.