FEBRUARY 28, 1864:
The
Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid:
A small, secretive band of Union Rangers led by H. Judson Kilpatrick and Captain Ulric Dahlgren (the son of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, the inventor of the “Dahlgren Gun”) enters Confederate territory, their mission being to raid Richmond, Virginia and take prisoner any high-ranking Confederates they can.
A small, secretive band of Union Rangers led by H. Judson Kilpatrick and Captain Ulric Dahlgren (the son of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, the inventor of the “Dahlgren Gun”) enters Confederate territory, their mission being to raid Richmond, Virginia and take prisoner any high-ranking Confederates they can.
The Raid goes badly awry. Ulric Dahlgren is killed by
Confederate troopers. When his body is searched, Orders from a high but
to-this-day undetermined Union source are found directing Dahlgren’s forces to
burn Richmond and to kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis if at all possible. This marks the
first time in modern history that a Government has ever ordered the death of a
foreign Head of State (this argument of course presumes that Davis is a foreign Head of State and not just
a rebel leader). In any event, such an action is unprecedented.
The Richmond newspapers publish the Dahlgren Orders as front
page news, and a firestorm erupts both North and South over the “effrontery”
and “barbarism” of such Orders.
President Lincoln denies issuing any such Orders, and indeed
such skullduggery seems completely out of character for Lincoln. The loyal
Northern Press dismisses the orders as forgeries, created by the Confederacy to
further inflame passions.
The authenticity of the Orders is still in doubt to this day,
though it is very possible that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was not
above such chicanery, may have issued the Orders on his own volition without
consulting his Commander-in-Chief. This theory is unprovable because Stanton
destroyed the original Orders when he reacquired them at war’s end. Only
handwritten copies survive, the validity and provenance of which is in doubt.
If he did issue the Dahlgren Orders, Stanton unwittingly
doomed President Lincoln, for President Davis subsequently issued his own
secret Orders directing that Abraham Lincoln be assassinated.
