March 1864–The Richmond Boondoggle and Tales of Assassination

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Union Brigadier Gen­er­al Hugh Jud­son Kil­patrick had big plans and even big­ger dreams. In des­per­a­tion, Lin­coln approved a raid by the 1st Ver­mont Cal­vary upon Rich­mond that even the Com­man­der of the Army didn’t sup­port. It was a star-crossed ven­ture with con­se­quences that no one could foretell.

March 19, 1864 Danville North Star

DEATH OF COL. DAHLGREN

Colonel Ulric Dahlgren
Colonel Ulric Dahlgren

The fol­low­ing is the arti­cle in the Rich­mond Sen­tinel of the 5th, announc­ing the death of Col. Dahlgren: “The gal­lant Dahlgreen is dead. After leav­ing Rich­mond, he pro­ceed­ed with a por­tion of his men toward the penin­su­la through the coun­try of King and Queen, where he met Lieut. Col. Pol­lard of the 9th Vir­ginia, and had a sharp encounter, in which Col. Dahlgren was shot dead. Some sev­en­ty or eighty of his men were cap­tured. The remain­der has joined Kil­patrick as has been already stat­ed. Col. Dahlgren was one of the bravest men of Amer­i­ca, and his death will be regret­ted by all who ever knew him. He had lost a leg in the ser­vice and had just arrived at that peri­od of con­va­les­cence when he could take the sad­dle, when he was cut down by war’s relent­less hand.

Upon his per­son were found an address to his men and a mem­o­ran­dum of the route he was to take with his com­mand, when he left Kil­patrick, where he was to go, what he was to do, when he was sup­posed to be there, and when he was to rejoin the main force.

The address to his men is a most spir­it-stir­ring and patri­ot­ic appeal to his sym­pa­thies and val­or on behalf of their fel­low sol­diers who are suf­fer­ing impris­on­ment in the loath­some dun­geons and upon the desert islands of the Con­fed­er­a­cy. He begs them not to fal­ter or flag, but to fol­low him to open prison doors and putting arms into the hands of their released brethren, they would march togeth­er to kill Davis and Cab­i­net, and then return home to their friends, ready and anx­ious for fur­ther deeds of valor.”

Lat­er accounts rep­re­sent that there is no doubt that the pre­tend­ed address said to have been upon the per­son of Col Dahlgren was a bold forgery. This decep­tion was nec­es­sary to excuse the bru­tal­i­ty with which his body was treat­ed. He was a brave, spir­it­ed young offi­cer, and noth­ing but the fear his true chival­ry inspired could have induced the cow­ard­ly revenge grat­i­fied in the abuse of his life­less remains.

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Major General Hugh Jackson Kilpatrick
Major Gen­er­al Hugh Jack­son Kilpatrick

Times were bleak in the win­ter of ’64. Gen­er­al Kilpatrick’s career had stalled along with the Union war effort, while Lin­coln was wit­ness­ing a swell of North­ern sen­ti­ment to give up the fight. Ear­li­er in the year, a Sen­a­tor had whis­pered in the President’s ear about a cock­sure cav­al­ry offi­cer who had con­coct­ed an auda­cious plan. It was a plan to ride into Rich­mond, cap­i­tal city of the Con­fed­er­a­cy, and lib­er­ate 1,000 Union offi­cers held at an old ware­house called Lib­by prison and 10,000 enlist­ed men con­fined at Belle Isle that sat out in the mid­dle of the James River.

On Feb­ru­ary 11, the Pres­i­dent learned that a large num­ber of offi­cers had tun­neled their way out of Lib­by. He knew when they made their way back to Wash­ing­ton, sto­ries about the hor­rors of their impris­on­ment in the North­ern press would soon fol­low. Lin­coln sum­moned Kil­patrick to the White House that evening.

The 28-year-old Gen­er­al want­ed to be pres­i­dent some day. He was cer­tain that becom­ing a mil­i­tary hero, like oth­er suc­cess­ful aspi­rants to the nation’s high­est office had done, was the best way to punch his tick­et. He had a rep­u­ta­tion for win­ning “Pyrrhic vic­to­ries” which con­sist­ed of reck­less tac­tics that result­ed in loss of his men for no mil­i­tary pur­pose. His star was fad­ing, but if he could pull off his Rich­mond caper, a cou­ple of gold stars would sure­ly fol­low. But win­ning approval for this adven­ture was prob­lem­at­ic. The com­man­der of the Army, Gen­er­al Meade, was not going to entrust such an oper­a­tion to a man who had once voiced the impolitic obser­va­tion that the son of the Union’s high­est rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer, who was an offi­cer him­self, was incom­pe­tent. How­ev­er Kil­patrick got around Meade by men­tion­ing his plan to Sen­a­tor Jacob Howard of Michi­gan at a din­ner par­ty one night, who in turn told Lincoln.

Kilpatrick’s plan was by no means a secret in Wash­ing­ton social cir­cles. At yet anoth­er par­ty, George Washington’s Birth­day Ball, he was approached by the youngest Colonel in the Army, Ulric Dahlgren, who want­ed in on the action. A mem­ber of Washington’s polit­i­cal — mil­i­tary glit­teri, the 21-year-old son of Admi­ral James Dahlgren (who invent­ed the Dahlgren gun, a muz­zle load­ing can­non used through the Navy) talked Kil­patrick into giv­ing him a key role in the Rich­mond raid.

With the lights of Rich­mond in sight and the sound of Kilpatrick’s can­non in earshot, the five hun­dred men had to give up the mis­sion and begin the task of find­ing their way back home, only to find them­selves repeat­ed­ly ambushed and scat­tered by Con­fed­er­ate mili­tia and hos­tile res­i­dents. Dahlgren and 40 Ver­mon­ters became sep­a­rat­ed from the rest of his men. Kil­patrick also was forced to abort the Rich­mond raid.

Even­tu­al­ly, in the storm and the cold, Dahlgren and his charges came upon a sin­gle Con­fed­er­ate sol­dier and a bar­ri­cade of brush block­ing the road. The offi­cer approached but there were 150 rebels behind the bush. The young Colonel was dead. His bul­let-rid­den body, lay­ing in the mud, was stripped of clothes and a fin­ger cut off to secure his wed­ding ring.

The South­ern­ers dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments on the corpse, which includ­ed unsigned and undat­ed papers with instruc­tions to destroy Rich­mond and kill Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis and mem­bers of his cab­i­net. This infor­ma­tion was soon in the hands of Con­fed­er­ate author­i­ties and quick­ly became the sto­ry in the Rich­mond Sen­tinel quot­ed by the Danville North Star.

The inci­dent became a cause cele­bre in both North and South. A debate con­tin­ues to this day over whether or not the papers were authen­tic. Polit­i­cal assas­sins are sel­dom found with march­ing orders in their pock­et. The brouha­ha also pre­dat­ed a con­cert­ed South­ern cam­paign, large­ly inef­fec­tu­al, to wreak hav­oc in Illi­nois, Indi­ana, and Ohio with their own plots of prison escapes and polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions. As the Dahlgren sto­ry broke, Jef­fer­son Davis inex­plic­a­bly ordered the offi­cer secret­ly buried.

Some of Dahlgren’s Ver­mon­ters were cap­tured and sent to the pris­ons in Rich­mond. A few would find their way to the infa­mous gulag in Ander­son­ville, Geor­gia. One Ver­mont troop­er, an Irish immi­grant named Michael Mad­den, was tak­en to Rich­mond and deemed “non-com­pos men­tis” by a Con­fed­er­ate sur­geon. He was prompt­ly paroled and sent back North. After dis­em­bark­ing a troop ship at Annapo­lis, a Fed­er­al doc­tor diag­nosed the pri­vate, find­ing that he had exhib­it­ed “marked symp­toms of idio­cy” and con­fined him to an insane asy­lum for six months. It’s unclear whether Madden’s suf­fer­ing was a con­se­quence of the war trau­ma or serv­ing under Kilpatrick.

Meade attempt­ed to demote Kil­patrick for his trou­ble, but the reck­less brag­gart was sent to the Civ­il War ver­sion of Siberia–out west to fight Indians.

Admiral Dahlgren
Admi­ral John Dahlgren–inventor of Dahlgren gun, a muz­zle load­ing can­non used through the Navy

When John Dahlgren request­ed his son’s corpse, the body came up miss­ing. How­ev­er, months lat­er, the Union’s spy net­work around Rich­mond found the young man’s remains and shipped them back to the Admiral.

Sources: The First Ver­mont Cav­al­ry in the Civ­il War: A His­to­ry by Joseph D. Col­lea; The Dahlgren Affair: Ter­ror & Con­spir­a­cy in the Civ­il War by Duane Schultz; Like a Mete­or Blaz­ing Brightly:The Short But Con­tro­ver­sial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren by Eric Wit­ten­berg; The North Star

 

 

 

 

 

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