Having followed Clan Dorsey through the good times and the better and then right into the swamp during the English Civil War, which almost did them in, we find the family granted a second chance across the Atlantic, where the story gets interesting again during the War Between the States.

The Union-vs-Confederacy punch-up has fascinated me since I was kid, possibly something to do with reincarnation. I often suspected I’d been on the losing side in that civil war too. I had a rebel cap when I was a kid, a present from an aunt in New York, no less. Slavery was an abhorrence, of course, but I get all weepy when I hear “Dixie”.

The most moving “theatre” experience of my life was on a visit to Stone Mountain outside Marietta, Georgia, where they have a light-and-sound show against the massive rock itself depicting Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jeff Davis, as well as the Stars ‘n’ Bars. Whatever guilt any northerner might feel watching it melts away when Willie Nelson sings “Georgia on My Mind” and they play “Dixie”. Not too far away is the site of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where Sherman wasted 3,000 Union lives trying to show off.

It would be a rare thing to be reincarnated with your name intact, but at any rate, the soldiers named Dorsey I’ve come across in US Civil War accounts have come from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

One of these shows up in a terrific bit of detective work featured on the website of the Delaware Civil War Project, whose researcher put a lot more work than I’m capable of into tracking down someone named Murtagh Dorsey.

Thomas M Dorsey (1845?-1873) , the third child of Murtagh and Catherine, was born in New York and raised in North Greenwich, Connecticut. In the summer of 1863, age 17, he ran away from home and enlisted in the Union Army, passing himself off as 23.

With the 21st New York Cavalry Regiment, Company E, under Maj Gen Franz Sigel, he was sent into to the Shenandoah Valley, where the boys had been chewed up by successive Confederate commanders since Stonewall Jackson two years earlier. In the spring of ‘64 they headed south as part of a two-pronged plan by which Gen William Sherman would push for Atlanta while Sigel moseyed up the Shenandoah toward Staunton, Virginia, a vital rail junction, then southeast over the Blue Ridge Mountains to grab the Confederate supply depot at Lynchburg.

Sigel split his guys into three groups, with our man Dorsey chucked in with Sigel’s own gang, comprising an infantry division headed by Brig Gen Jeremiah Sullivan and a cavalry division under Maj Gen Julius Stahel.

On May 15 they whacked into rebel infantry and dismounted cavalry at New Market led by Maj Gen John Breckinridge. Tom Dorsey was on one of the horses that charged an artillery battery and then charged backwards because of “well-aimed rifle fire”. Their next assignment was to watch Yankee bums as the army retreated across the covered bridge at (why not?) Meem’s Bottom.

Ulysses Grant promptly sacked Sigel and hired Maj Gen David Hunter, who had another go at Staunton in late May. This time the Union fellers thumped the rebs, with Stahel’s cavalry doing a swell job, using breech-loading carbines instead of horses. Staunton was taken on June 8, but wheen the assault began on Lynchburg, “Hunter lost his nerve” and “began an ill-considered retreat back across the Blue Ridge and inexplicably westward toward Charleston”.

(You don’t seem to find this kind of humour in southern accounts for some reason.)

Confederate Maj Gen Jubal Early followed Hunter all the way down the Shenandoah Valley until he could see Lincoln’s laundry hanging on the White House clothesline. Grant was able to fend off disaster, but it was a huge setback, so Hunter got the can and Maj Gen Philip Sheridan got a phonecall.

Drummer Gilbert Marbury, 22nd New York Infantry.

Tom Dorsey’s regiment was battered senseless, but got sent right back out again anyway, chasing after Early. Only in late August did they get a little R&R, but by that time Dorsey was in the military hospital at Annapolis, something about aching feet. He rejoined his cohort in September and saw almost continuous action until the end of the war, skirmishing with Johnny Reb and joining in the hammering of Gordonsville, Virginia.

Adventure not over. The slaves were free, but not Tom Dorsey. The 21st was sent to Fort Collins in Colorado to protect stagecoaches and wagon trains in the midst of an Indian war. Finally, in late 1865, Dorsey (by now promoted to corporal!) was mustered out and headed home. He moved to Illinois, got married and had three sons, none of them named Paul.

Tom Dorsey opened a billiard parlour in Wilmington and died suddenly in 1873 of inflammation of the lungs. His older brother Dick took over both Tom’s poolhall and his widow. Apparently one night in October 1873, so the Wilmington Advocate reported, Dick turfed out a young customer named Willet , who then pulled a gun and started shooting the place up, somehow failing to get a bead on Dorsey before the cops showed up.

Dick Dorsey branched out from billiards into the less risky business of auctioning cattle. The Dorsey Auction Room and Sales Barn is still standing, but full of human tenants now.

I’ve also comes across a Stonewall Jackson Dorsey who was born in Kentucky in 1863 and thus was named after the great Confederate hero. Obviously SJ Dorsey had nothing else to do with the Civil War.

He died in 1949 in Palestine, Texas, leaving wife Mary Lee, a Missouri girl whose maiden name was Van Meter. It would be interesting to know if she was any relation to Homer Van Meter, who who John Dillinger’s best buddy.

And there’s Cadet John Isham Dorsey (1847-1931), also on the Confederate side, who’s endearingly paid tribute on the website of his great-grandson David Whitt Dorsey.

The site also tracks Edward Dorsey (1637-1705?) — probably the guy mentioned in my prior post — whose father, interestingly, was named Edward D’Arcy (1625?-1659).

John Isham Dorsey came out of the Georgia Military Institute in Marietta, specifically on May 13, 1864, when duty called. The cadets left the school, and it wasn’t long before Union General Sherman moved in, stayed awhile, then burned it down.

No one said this would be fun, son. A Confederate casualty near Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, May 1864.

Dorsey’s battalion, all boys 16 to 18 years old, first guarded Marietta, which was to the rear of General Joe Johnston’s Confederate army, then moved into the line of fire at Resaca and, by accounts from both sides, handled itself well. The boys were also cool under severe artillery shelling at Turner’s Ferry. Their commander, Maj Gen Henry Wayne, wrote late that they went “into a fight as cheerfully as they would enter a ballroom”. When Lee surrendered they were guarding Augusta, Georgia.

Finally, there’s a book called “William Dorsey Pender: Lee’s Favorite Brigade Commander” by Edward Longacre, and Wikipedia tells me that this man “was one of the youngest and most promising generals fighting for the Confederacy”.

Dorsey Pender (1834-63), as his friends called him, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. This North Carolina boy came out of the US Military Academy and, commissioned a second lieutenant in the 1st US Artillery regiment, then the 2nd, then the 1st Dragoons, he fought Indians in Washington Territory until the eve of the Civil War, when he was appointed a captain of artillery in the Confederate Army.

He was soon a colonel commanding infantry, and then after success in the Battle of Seven Pines in June 1862 was promoted — personally and on the field by President Jefferson Davis — to brigadier general, in charge of a brigade of North Carolinians in AP Hill’s Light Division.

He was wounded in the arm at the Battle of Malvern Hill, but came back swinging to fight again at Cedar Mountain, Harper’s Ferry, Antietam and Second Bull Run, where he received a minor head wound from an exploding shell.

At Fredericksburg Pender was wounded again, in the left arm, but continued in command in the heat of battle. At Chancellorsville in May 1863, when AP Hill was wounded during Stonewall Jackson’s assault, Pender assumed command, but they next day he was wounded in the arm yet again, and again it was minor — thanks to the officer standing in front of him who used the same bullet to die from.

The wounded after the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863.

Jackson was also killed, and Lee put AP Hill in charge of a new Third Corps and gave Pender, all of 29, a division and major general’s shoulder decorations. “Pender is an excellent officer,” Lee wrote to Jefferson Davis, “attentive, industrious and brave; has been conspicuous in every battle, and, I believe, wounded in almost all of them.”

Dorsey Pender’s “luck” ran out at Gettysburg in July 1863. There was a mess-up on the 1st with Henry Heth’s division getting banged up unnecessarily when Pender could have helped. Then Pender attacked the enemy on Seminary Ridge and, despite plenty of bloodshed, pushed the Union troops all the way back through Gettysburg.

On July 2 Pender began a planned sweep following James Longstreet’s men but was wounded in the thigh by a shell fragment and had to turn over his command, disrupting the assault. Pender was evacuated to Staunton, Virginia, where his leg was amputated and an artery ruptured, killing him. By way of compensation, Pender County, North Carolina, is named for him.

Just over a century after his death his letters to his wife were published. Wikipedia names the book “The General to his Lady”, but William Hassler also brought out a book in 1965 called “One of Lee’s Best Men: The Letters of William Dorsey Pender”. Maybe it’s the same book.