Lemuel Dobbs, 1st. Lieutenant, Company C

Lemuel D. Dobbs

Lemuel D. Dobbs was one of the most experienced white officers to serve with Maryland’s 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. Before joining the 19th, he had already fought through more than two years of the Civil War with a Pennsylvania regiment, had been wounded and captured, and had returned to duty after a prisoner exchange. His service with the 19th brought an even more extraordinary ordeal: a gunshot wound at the Battle of the Crater, capture by Confederate troops, months as a prisoner of war, and a remarkable escape from Columbia, South Carolina, followed by a forty-one-day journey to Union lines.

Pennsylvania Soldier

Dobbs was about twenty-one years old and living in Marionville, Pennsylvania, when he entered Union service in 1861. He enlisted in Company K of the 11th Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteers, also designated the 40th Pennsylvania Infantry. His compiled record and later pension testimony show that he served as a private and corporal and performed duty with the regiment’s color guard.

His first capture came during the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, Virginia, on June 27, 1862. Dobbs was wounded and taken prisoner as the Union Fifth Corps was driven from the field during the Seven Days Battles. He was confined in Confederate hands, including at Belle Isle near Richmond, before being exchanged in August 1862. While being marched toward Aiken’s Landing for exchange, he suffered a severe sunstroke. Soon afterward, while marching from Washington, he was again overcome by heat and became ill with diarrhea. He was taken to Harewood General Hospital in Washington, D.C., and for a time was considered unfit for normal field duty.

Gettysburg and the Road to the 19th USCT

Dobbs eventually returned to his Pennsylvania regiment. His later pension evidence describes continuing weakness from heat-related illness, but he remained in service. In July 1863 he fought at Gettysburg with the Pennsylvania Reserves on Little Round Top, where the division helped strengthen the Union left during the critical fighting on July 2.

Later that year Dobbs was selected for a commission in the rapidly expanding United States Colored Troops. He was appointed second lieutenant on November 15, 1863, and mustered into the 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, at Camp Stanton, Maryland, on December 21. He was assigned to Company C. Like the other white officers of the regiment, Dobbs was charged with training and leading African American soldiers at a time when Confederate policy placed captured Black troops and their white officers in particular danger.

Recruiting Duty

Early in 1864 Dobbs was temporarily absent from the regiment on recruiting duty. His military records show him detached for that purpose in January. A later newspaper account of his career credited him with helping recruit hundreds of Black soldiers in Maryland. By the spring of 1864 he was back with the regiment as it joined the Army of the Potomac for the brutal Overland Campaign and the opening operations against Petersburg.

The Battle of the Crater

On July 30, 1864, the 19th USCT went into the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg as part of the Fourth Division of the Ninth Corps. The regiment entered a battlefield already thrown into confusion after Union troops exploded a huge mine beneath the Confederate lines. Black troops of the division advanced into intense Confederate fire and then faced a powerful counterattack.

Dobbs was shot in the chest during the fighting and captured. For weeks his own regiment believed that he had been killed. A regimental order mourning the dead listed Lieutenants Mix, Dobbs, Raymor, and Pennell among the officers thought to have fallen. Only later did Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Perkins receive unofficial information that Dobbs, Andrew Raymor, and another missing officer were actually prisoners of war in Columbia, South Carolina.

A Prisoner of War

Dobbs’ position was especially dangerous because he was an officer of Black troops. Confederate policy toward captured United States Colored Troops and their white officers threatened treatment outside the ordinary rules governing prisoners of war. A much later account published at the time of Dobbs’ death related that, when captured, he did not try to conceal his rank and that a Confederate general, impressed by his conduct, ordered that he be protected as a prisoner of war. The story was recorded decades after the event and should be treated as a veteran recollection rather than a contemporary official report, but it became an important part of how Dobbs’ comrades remembered him.

His records show that he was held at several Confederate prison locations before reaching the officers’ prison camp at Columbia, South Carolina. Meanwhile, on August 5, 1864, he was promoted to first lieutenant. Because he was in Confederate hands, he did not learn of the promotion until after his escape.

Escape from Columbia

On November 21, 1864, Dobbs escaped from the Confederate prison camp at Columbia. He and other prisoners tunneled their way out. Dobbs then began an extraordinary journey through the Carolinas and the mountains of eastern Tennessee. According to the account preserved in his later obituary, he traveled largely at night and at times walked barefoot through snow.

Forty-one days after escaping, Dobbs reached Union lines at Knoxville, Tennessee, on January 1, 1865. The achievement was remarkable for any soldier; for Dobbs it followed months of imprisonment and the chest wound he had received at the Crater. He had now survived two battlefield captures during the war and escaped from the second.

Return to Duty

After recovering from his ordeal, Dobbs returned to military duty. His records show that his promotion to first lieutenant was formally recognized and that he later served in Company H before being transferred back to Company C in May 1865. He also performed staff and administrative duties. By the summer of 1865 he was again serving with the 19th as the regiment prepared for a very different assignment far from Virginia.

The 19th USCT was sent to Texas after the collapse of the Confederacy. Dobbs accompanied the regiment to the Rio Grande and served at Brownsville. His records identify him as commanding a guard at Fort Brown and show continued service there through the regiment’s final months. In December 1866 he became seriously ill with cholera followed by intermittent fever and inflammation of the liver. He was confined to his quarters for about three weeks and was still recovering when the regiment left.

Muster Out and Life in Texas

The 19th USCT mustered out at Brownsville on January 15, 1867. Dobbs’ health prevented him from traveling immediately, and an Army surgeon later certified that he remained in Brownsville until about February 1, when he had recovered sufficiently to resume business there.

Dobbs did not immediately return to Pennsylvania. He and his wife remained in Texas, living at Brownsville and elsewhere. A Freedmen’s Bureau record identifies Lemuel D. Dobbs as a contractor in Texas in September 1867, evidence that his connection with the region continued after his Army service. Pension records state that he and his wife, whom he had married in 1864, lived together until 1882, when they separated and were later divorced.

Health Problems and Pension

The physical effects of Dobbs’ long military service followed him for decades. His pension file contains extensive testimony concerning the sunstroke, chronic diarrhea, weakness, and recurring inability to tolerate heat that began during his first period as a prisoner in 1862. Witnesses recalled that even after the war he was sometimes unable to work normally during hot weather.

By 1904 Dobbs was receiving a federal pension of $17 per month. A Bureau of Pensions review described nearly six years of essentially continuous military service, two captures, and two periods as a prisoner of war. In 1910 Congress approved a private pension measure increasing his payment to $30 per month.

Grand Army of the Republic

Dobbs eventually moved to Kansas, where he became deeply involved in Civil War veterans’ organizations. He was particularly active in the Grand Army of the Republic and in organizations of former Union prisoners of war. Contemporary accounts described him as a familiar and dedicated participant in Kansas G.A.R. affairs. He served as senior vice-commander of the National Association of Union Ex-Prisoners of War and as adjutant and quartermaster of the Kansas association of former prisoners.

Death and Burial

In May 1918, although seriously ill, Dobbs traveled from the National Military Home at Leavenworth to Chanute, Kansas, for the annual state encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic. He reportedly told fellow veterans that he had never missed a state encampment and believed this one might be his last. He died in Chanute on May 20, 1918. He was buried the following day at Leavenworth National Cemetery, where his grave is in Section 10.

Lemuel D. Dobbs’ Civil War career spanned almost the entire conflict and extended beyond it into the postwar occupation of Texas. He fought at Gaines’ Mill and Gettysburg before accepting a commission to lead Black soldiers. With the 19th USCT he survived the catastrophe at the Crater, imprisonment in the Confederacy, and a dramatic escape to Union lines. His later devotion to veterans’ organizations suggests how strongly the war—and especially the experience of captivity—continued to shape his life more than half a century after Appomattox.