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Confederate (CSV)

Lieutenant

William Porcher DuBose

(1836 - 1918)

Home State: South Carolina

Education: South Carolina Military Academy (1855), U of Virginia, Class of 1859

Command Billet: Regimental Adjutant

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: Holcombe (SC) Legion Infantry Battalion

Before Sharpsburg

He graduated from the South Carolina Military Academy (now the Citadel) in 1855 and the University of Virginia in 1859. He was studying in a seminary in Camden, SC to be an Episcopal priest at the start of the War. He was appointed Adjutant to the former SCMA Superintendent, Colonel Stevens, as that officer organized the Holcombe Legion in November 1861. He was twice wounded at Second Manassas in August 1862.

On the Campaign

He was Adjutant of the regiment in Maryland. After the action at Turner's Gap on 14 September 1862 Stevens wrote:

About 11 or 12 o'clock [P.M. on the 14th] I received an order from General R. E. Lee to send a small detachment back to the ground where I had fought, and ascertain whether the enemy still occupied it or had retired. This duty I intrusted to Lieutenant Dubose, then on picket. Advancing to the battle-ground, or nearly to it, the Lieutenant left his men and moved on alone. In a few moments a shot was fired and a cry was heard. Falling back some 100 yards, his men waited in vain for his return to them, and two or three of the enemy having been seen, they returned to report the loss of their beloved leader. Whether that single shot proved fatal or whether he is a prisoner I know not, but in him I have lost my right arm, and the service as noble, as pure-minded, as fearless an officer as ever battled for his country.

DuBose had run into pickets of the 107th Pennsylvania Infantry and discharged his pistol while trying to draw it out. He was wrestled down and captured there by a soldier he later identified as "Cronin".

The rest of the War

He was held at Fort Delaware until paroled, exchanged, and returned to duty in November. He was wounded in action at Kinston, NC in December 1862. In late 1863 he was commissioned Chaplain, Kershaw's Brigade, and began that duty in 1864. He served to the surrender in 1865.

After the War

He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1866 and served in Fairfield and Abbeville, SC. He was University Chaplain at the University of the South (1871-1882) and professor of Ethics (1871-1908).

References & notes

The quote above from Stevens' Report. Details from DuBose's own Turning Points in My Life (1912). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Anne Barnwell Peronneau (1836-1873) in 1863 and they had four children. He married, secondly, Maria Louise Rucks Yerger (1836-?) in 1878. Her portrait, as Maria Louise Rucks Yerger Dubois, is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.