Civil War Sgt. Decatur Dorsey, who lived in Hoboken until his death in 1891, was an escaped slave who had enlisted in the Maryland 39th Colored Regiment in March of 1864.
Born in 1836, Dorsey went on to win the Medal of Honor at the infamous Battle of the Crater during the siege of Petersburg, Va. in 1864.
Battle of the Crater
Early on the morning of July 30, 1864, four tons of gunpowder were exploded inside a tunnel beneath a Confederate fort in Virginia, leveling several hundred feet of defensive earthworks, and blowing a hole in the ground 170 feet long by 60 feet wide by 30 feet deep.
The original plan had been to send the all-black Fourth Division, commanded by Gen. Edward Ferrero and including Dorsey, into the gap created by the blast. The black troops were to expand the gap and clear the way for three other divisions to break through to the high ground where they would have a clear shot at Petersburg.
Before this, black troops had been used only to guard trains and facilities in the rear. Given this opportunity, Ferrero’s troops had been rehearsing the role enthusiastically for a week.
The day before the explosion, however, Gen. George G. Meade decreed that a white division should lead the charge. Meade, who had been criticized by abolitionists in the past, did not want to create the perception that, if the going got rough, he was using black troopers as cannon fodder.
The lead was given to an untrained white division led by inexperienced Gen. James H. Ledlie. Ferrero’s Fourth Division would bring up the rear.
Instead of rolling out to the left and the right to roll up the enemy’s flanks, Ledlie’s men ran into the trench where, after some initial Confederate confusion, they were cut down by a Southern counterattack. The two white divisions that followed only added to the chaos.
Only the black troops broke through the general confusion, even though Ferrero and Ledlie both remained behind in a shelter drinking rum.
Dorsey was among those who reached the battlements, but a Confederate countercharge forced the Union troops to retreat.
Dorsey shows his valor
It was at this point that Dorsey distinguished himself, rallying his troops and getting wounded in the process. According to “The Negro in the Civil War” (Civil War Times Illustrated, Eastern Acorn Press, 1988), “Sergeant Decatur Dorsey of the 39th Regiment won the Medal of Honor for planting the colors in advance of his men on the Confederate works and for rallying them after they had been driven back to their lines.”
It is worth pointing out that, while many such honors of the time were presented for rather ordinary pursuits such as capturing an enemy flag, Dorsey’s, unlike some 900 others between the 1860s and the 1910s that were rescinded, was reviewed and allowed to stand.
In less than a year of battle, the six Maryland regiments made up of black troopers lost only 352 men, earned five Congressional Medals of Honor, and suffered only 221 desertions at a time when white Maryland units were experiencing desertion rates as high as 40 percent.
The Maryland 39th was mustered out on Dec. 4, 1865.
Dorsey in Hoboken
Sometime after the war, former Sgt. Dorsey moved to Hoboken, where he lived, probably on Newark Street, until he died in 1891. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Flower Hill Cemetery in North Bergen.
In 1984, Dorsey’s grave was discovered and moved, with full military honors and the dedication of a headstone paid for by the federal government, to its present site at the west end of the cemetery.
Editor’s note: A full version of this column was originally printed in Hoboken History Issue No. 22, published by the Hoboken Historical Museum. Please visit the museum at 1301 Hudson St. for more information. To read past columns from this year-long series, visit www.hobokenreporter.com.