Alexander Porter Morse (1842-1921) was officer for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and later a lawyer practicing international and Constitutional law in Washington, D.C. Morse was born October 19, 1842 in Saint Martinville, Louisiana. He was a student at Princeton University when in 1861 he joined the Confederacy's 1st Louisiana Cavalry. In 1863, Morse was captured and brought aboard a steamship called "the Maple Leaf" to be transported North to a prisoner of war camp. Morse and other Confederate officers overtook the crew and redirected the "Maple Leaf" to shore where the prisoners escaped to Confederate Territory.

After the war, Alexander Porter Morse moved to Washington D.C. and became a journalist for several newspapers. He finished his education at Princeton, receiving a PhD in 1885. In 1872, Morse received a degree in law from Georgetown University. Morse acted as attorney in several complex cases including Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) where he acted as defense attorney for Judge Howard Ferguson. He also acted as counsel in claims of the Venezuela Steam Transportation Company against Venezuela in 1894; in the Van Bokkelen case in 1888 between the U.S. and Haiti; and as a delegate from the United States to the Association of Reform and Codification of Laws of Nations in London, England. Morse wrote several law related books such as “Citizenship by Birth and Naturalization,” the “Rights and Duties of Belligerents and Neutral from the American Point of View,” and the “Status of Inhabitants of Territory Acquired by Discovery, Purchase, Cession, or Conquest, According to the Usage of the United States.”