William Downey

Under Confederate Fire, He Volunteered for the Rescue

William Downey was born in Ireland in 1832. Details of his childhood and early years remain limited, but by the American Civil War he had made his way to Massachusetts and entered United States Army service from Fall River. He served as a Private in Company B of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, a Union regiment whose wartime service took its soldiers into the difficult coastal and river country of the Department of the South.

By 1864, Downey and his regiment were operating in a theater where Union forces sought to disrupt Confederate transportation and supply routes linking Charleston, South Carolina, with Savannah, Georgia. These operations often required cavalrymen to perform duties far removed from the traditional image of mounted combat. On May 24, 1864, that reality placed Downey in the middle of a desperate rescue on the Ashepoo River.

Union troops had embarked aboard the steamer Boston as part of an expedition intended to strike a Confederate railroad connection. The vessel carried hundreds of soldiers, including men of the 34th United States Colored Troops and the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, as well as horses and military equipment. Before reaching its intended landing point, the Boston grounded near a Confederate position.

The stranded vessel soon came under artillery fire. Confederate guns began striking the Boston while troops aboard faced the danger of remaining trapped on a disabled transport within range of the enemy. With only a small boat available, getting the soldiers away from the steamer became an urgent and extremely dangerous task.

Second Lieutenant George W. Brush was involved in the effort to move men from the Boston. As Confederate fire intensified, he called for volunteers willing to return in the small boat and help rescue the soldiers still aboard. William Downey immediately joined the effort alongside fellow cavalrymen John Duffey, David L. Gifford, and Patrick Scanlan.

Their decision placed them directly under enemy fire. The boat crew had to approach the stranded Boston while Confederate artillery and small-arms fire threatened both the vessel and the rescuers. Men aboard the steamer were attempting to escape the bombardment, and the small rescue craft risked being overwhelmed as soldiers sought a way off the damaged transport.

Downey and the other volunteers continued the rescue despite the danger. They helped convey groups of soldiers from the Boston to safety, then returned toward the stranded vessel to bring away more men. The operation required repeated exposure to Confederate fire rather than a single brief dash into danger. Each return to the Boston meant voluntarily entering the same zone of fire again.

The official account of Downey’s heroism emphasized exactly that point. He had volunteered as a member of the boat crew, assisted in carrying a large number of Union soldiers from the stranded steamer to shore, and remained exposed throughout the rescue to heavy fire from a Confederate battery. His courage was defined not by an offensive charge but by a sustained effort to save fellow soldiers while the enemy continued firing.

The Boston was eventually evacuated. Once the remaining men had been removed and what supplies could be recovered had been taken away, the stranded vessel was burned rather than left for Confederate forces. The expedition itself did not achieve its original objective, but the rescue prevented the grounding of the Boston from becoming an even greater disaster.

Downey’s war did not end on the Ashepoo River. Later in 1864, while still serving with the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry, he was captured at Gainesville, Florida. He remained in Confederate hands until the closing months of the war and was paroled in April 1865. His military service concluded shortly afterward when he was mustered out in June 1865.

For more than three decades, the courage Downey displayed at Ashepoo River remained without the nation’s highest formal recognition. That changed on January 21, 1897, when he received the Medal of Honor for his actions of May 24, 1864. The award recognized the decision he had made as a Private to volunteer for a rescue mission that required repeated exposure to Confederate fire.

By the time the Medal of Honor was presented, thirty-three years had passed since the stranded Boston came under fire. Downey was no longer the cavalry private who had climbed into a small boat on a South Carolina river, but the decoration permanently connected his name with that moment of Civil War courage.

The Medal of Honor became the principal military decoration associated with his service. Its significance lay in the nature of his action: he willingly accepted extraordinary personal risk not to attack an enemy position or capture a flag, but to save fellow Union soldiers whose transport had become trapped under fire.

Downey lived for another twelve years after receiving the Medal of Honor. He died on June 30, 1909, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in New Bedford, where his military service and Medal of Honor legacy remain commemorated.

His story represents a distinctive form of battlefield heroism. William Downey was a cavalry private, yet the action that secured his place in American military history took place in a small boat on a river. Faced with a stranded steamer, soldiers in immediate danger, and a Confederate battery firing upon them, he chose to volunteer. He then continued the rescue while exposed to that fire, helping carry men away from the Boston and toward safety.

More than three decades later, the Medal of Honor formally recognized what had happened on the Ashepoo River. Downey’s legacy endures because his courage was expressed through rescue—returning toward danger when the safer choice would have been to remain ashore, and placing himself under enemy fire so that others could escape.