behind AotW

Lieutenant William Porcher DuBose was the Adjutant of the Holcombe Legion Infantry Battalion in Maryland in 1862. Just before midnight on 14 September Colonel Stevens sent DuBose back toward the crest of South Mountain at Turner’s Gap to

… ascertain whether the enemy still occupied it or had retired … 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 …

The shot was accidental, from DuBose’s pistol, and he was captured by pickets of the 107th Pennsylvania Infantry. He was exchanged and returned to duty in November 1862. He later served as Kershaw’s Brigade Chaplain, and was an Episcopal priest and prolific theological writer after the war.

His photographs, above in clerical collar, and below as a Citadel Cadet, are from the Archive at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN as published in Robert Boak Slocum’s The Theology of William Porcher Dubose: Life, Movement, and Being (2000).