William Crosby Dawson (January 4, 1798 – May 5, 1856) was a lawyer, judge, politician, and soldier from Georgia.

[2] Dawson was elected as one of the vice presidents of the Alumni Society of the University of Georgia at its first meeting, on August 4, 1834.

In 1836, he was Captain of Volunteers under General Winfield Scott in the Creek and Seminole Indian War in Florida.

He thought his defeat as gubernatorial candidate meant that voters disapproved of his congressional service, particularly his vote earlier in the year to tax coffee and tea.

He was appointed by Governor George W. Crawford to fill a vacancy as Judge of the Ocmulgee Circuit Court in 1845, but he declined to run as a candidate for the bench at the completion of his term.

[8][9] He chaired the Committee on Private Land Claims (32nd Congress) and presided over the Southern convention at Memphis in 1853.

[19] Joshua Reed Giddings described him: "He was a man of much suavity of manner; one of that class of Southern statesmen who felt it necessary to carry every measure by the influence of personal kindness, and an expression of horror at all agitation of the slave question, under the apprehension that it might dissolve the Union.

[22] Company C, 3d Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A., from Greene County, was called the "Dawson Grays" in his honor.