After the local customs inspector protested the seizure, Joseph E. Brown, the governor of Georgia ordered the cutter and crew released.

[2] 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 remained until being ordered to Baltimore, Maryland, in December, 1876 to be refitted as a training ship.

The first eight cadets of the newly established Revenue Cutter School of Instruction reported aboard Dobbin and they set sail on their first practice cruise on 24 May 1877.