USRC James C. Dobbin was a topsail schooner of the Cushing-class (1853) named after President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of the Navy, James Cochrane Dobbin. She was initially stationed at Wilmington, North Carolina, but in 1856 was moved to Savannah, Georgia. She was seized by a secessionist mob on 3 January 1861 at Savannah and the officers and crew were held in irons. After the local customs inspector protested the seizure, Joseph E. Brown, the governor of Georgia ordered the cutter and crew released. Dobbin was the only revenue cutter based in the South to escape to the North before the Civil War. On 26 April 1861, she was ordered to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to receive heavier armament and then assigned to New York City. In 1863 Dobbin was reassigned to Portland, Maine where she rem