Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid
DateFebruary 28–March 3, 1864
LocationCentral Virginia
Combatants
United StatesConfederacy
Commanders
Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulric DahlgrenGeneral Wade Hampton (although Confederate responses were mostly uncoordinated)
Casualties
340 Negligible
ENTRY

Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid

SUMMARY

The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid (February 28–March 3, 1864) was an ambitious attempt by Union cavalrymen to assault the lightly defended Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, and free prisoners of war during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The brainchild of the flamboyant Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick, the raid turned into a fiasco when Kilpatrick’s men were stopped northwest of the city and a supporting column, under the command of twenty-one-year-old Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, was routed to the east. Dahlgren was killed, and papers found on his body, which were subsequently published by the Richmond press, detailed plans to burn the city and assassinate Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. Public opinion in both the North and the South was inflamed, and historians continue to debate the authority behind these so-called Dahlgren Papers. When she read of Dahlgren’s corpse being mistreated, Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy in Richmond, used her contacts secretly to exhume the body and rebury it elsewhere.

Background

The plan was Kilpatrick’s. Known as “Kill-Cavalry”—a nickname intended to suggest his daring but also his recklessness—the general hoped to build on the tactical success of his raids around Richmond the previous spring. (The raids had alarmed Richmonders but did little to support Union general Joseph Hooker, who, during the Chancellorsville Campaign, had charged his cavalry with cutting Robert E. Lee‘s supply line. They failed.) Kilpatrick’s proposal would also right the wrongs of several abortive attempts to rescue Union prisoners who, by all accounts, were suffering terribly at Belle Isle and Libby Prison.

H. Judson Kilpatrick

Early in February 1864, Kilpatrick consulted with United States president Abraham Lincoln and the secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton. He received permission for a raid that, in conjunction with an infantry feint and another cavalry raid near Charlottesville, would approach Richmond from the north, destroying rails, canals, and Confederate infrastructure along the way. On February 23, Kilpatrick met Ulric Dahlgren at a soiree and invited him to join the operation. Dahlgren was the dashing son of Union rear admiral John A. Dahlgren, for whom the Dahlgren gun was named. The younger Dahlgren had lost his right leg at Gettysburg the previous summer but was ready to see more fighting. At the head of a smaller detachment, Dahlgren would swing around Richmond and hit the capital from the south. Kilpatrick wagered his superior, Major General Alfred Pleasonton, five thousand dollars that he would enter Richmond; a day into the raid, he offered to double it. Dahlgren, meanwhile, wrote his father that if all went according to plan, the raid would be “the grandest thing on record.”

The Raid

Kilpatrick and Dahlgren set out from Stevensburg, Virginia, on the evening of February 28. The following afternoon, Kilpatrick and his detachment of 3,500 men reached Beaver Dam Station and began ripping up rails and destroying Confederate property. They failed, however, to prevent an approaching train from reaching Richmond and spreading the alarm. Confederate home guard units mobilized around the capital, and late that evening Confederate cavalrymen under Major General Wade Hampton set off in pursuit of the raiders. By March 2, after slow progress through sleet, snow, and rain, Kilpatrick reached the inner defensive lines of Richmond. But with no sign of Dahlgren inside the city, Kilpatrick retreated eastward. On the night of March 2, Kilpatrick considered another attack on Richmond, but the arrival of Hampton’s troopers foiled these plans. Some historians have also pointed out that Kilpatrick had made no arrangements for arming, feeding, or transporting the freed prisoners, a fact which may have given him pause. Kilpatrick finally reached the safety of Union lines at Yorktown on March 4.

Colonel Ulric Dahlgren

Dahlgren and his detachment of about five hundred men ran into even greater problems. They made it to the James River at Dover Mills but were unable to cross because of recent rains. Dahlgren, however, blamed the setback on his African American guide, Martin Robinson, and hanged the man using the reins of Dahlgren’s horse. After turning to approach Richmond from the east, Dahlgren encountered stiff resistance. He finally retreated toward Union lines on the Peninsula, but Confederate cavalrymen and bushwhackers ambushed and killed him.

Aftermath

The raid accomplished nothing except minor damage to railroads and buildings. The death of Dahlgren, however, led to one of the most controversial episodes of the war. A thirteen-year-old member of Richmond’s home guard discovered on the Union colonel’s body handwritten orders for the burning of Richmond and the assassination of Davis and his cabinet. Outraged Confederate authorities published them in the press, catching Union generals and politicians off guard. Dahlgren’s father, among many others in the North, insisted they were fabrications, while the Richmond Examiner waxed indignant: “The depredations of the last Yankee raiders, and the wantonness of their devastation equal anything heretofore committed during the war.”

Ambuscade and Death of Colonel Dahlgren

The papers themselves disappeared shortly thereafter. Although the orders seem to have been genuine, it is yet unknown whether they originated with Dahlgren, Kilpatrick, or even Stanton. The historian Stephen W. Sears, in Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac (2001), argued for the last: “The idea of liberating the maddened prisoners and exhorting them to carry out the death sentences and the pillaging was a masterstroke of rationalization and perfectly in character for the secretary of war.” In any event, Confederate and Union authorities let the matter drop after the commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac, Major General George G. Meade, assured Lee that Dahlgren’s papers were unsanctioned orders.

Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew assumed Dahlgren’s innocence and, disturbed at what she perceived to be the Confederates’ mistreatment of his corpse, set herself to finding it. Acting on a tip from an African American who witnessed Dahlgren’s secret burial in Oakwood Cemetery, Van Lew and the Richmond underground managed to unearth the body and rebury it in what was, by their lights, a more proper manner. When Confederates agreed to transfer Dahlgren’s remains north to his father, they found the grave empty. “Dahlgren had risen,” exclaimed the Richmond Examiner, “or been resurrected.”

RELATED CONTENT
MAP
TIMELINE
February 16, 1864
Union cavalry brigadier general H. Judson Kilpatrick draws up plans for a raid on the Confederate capital at Richmond. His goal is to destroy Confederate infrastructure and free Union prisoners of war.
February 23, 1864
Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren joins a planned raid on Richmond by H. Judson Kilpatrick. Dahlgren's death would precipitate one of the most controversial episodes of the war.
February 28, 1864, 6 p.m.
Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren, along with 460 cavalrymen, embarks on a raid against Richmond, splashing across Ely's Ford on the Rapidan River by 11 p.m. Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick leaves with his detachment of 3,500 men at 7 p.m.
February 29, 1864, 8 a.m.
Union brigadier general H. Judson Kilpatrick reaches Spotsylvania in his cavalry raid against Richmond.
February 29, 1864, 5 p.m.
Union brigadier general H. Judson Kilpatrick and his men reach Beaver Dam Station, in Hanover County, on their way to Richmond. They burn the station but are spotted by Confederates, who raise the alarm in the capital.
February 29, 1864, 10:30 p.m.
Confederate cavalry general Wade Hampton sets out in pursuit of Union cavalry raiders led by H. Judson Kilpatrick and Ulric Dahlgren.
March 1, 1864
Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren splits his cavalry detachment, sending a hundred men to destroy Confederate infrastructure, while Dahlgren proceeds with the remainder of the men toward Richmond.
March 1, 1864, 10 a.m.
Union cavalry general H. Judson Kilpatrick reaches the outer defenses of Richmond, and waits in vain for Ulric Dahlgren's men to enter the city.
March 1, 1864, 1 p.m.
Union cavalry general H. Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry raiders advance as far as the inner line of Richmond's defenses.
March 1, 1864, 3 p.m.
After waiting in vain for the arrival of Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren's detachment of raiders, Union general H. Judson Kilpatrick decides to withdraw his cavalrymen from the outskirts of Richmond.
March 2, 1864, 4 p.m.
Confederate forces near the capital at Richmond close in on cavalry raiders commanded by Colonel Ulric Dahlgren.
March 2—3, 1864, 10 p.m.—1 a.m.
Union general H. Judson Kilpatrick retreats from the outskirts of Richmond after being surprised by Confederate cavalry commanded by Major General Wade Hampton.
March 2, 1864, 11:30 p.m.
A band of cavalrymen and bushwhackers under command of Lieutenant James Pollard of the 9th Virginia Cavalry ambush Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren and kill him.
March 3, 1864
When inspecting the personal effects of killed Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren, William Littlepage, a thirteen-year-old member of Richmond's Home Guard, discovers orders calling for the burning of Richmond and the assassination of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. He passes them on to his teacher, Edward W. Halbach.
March 3, 1864
Union brigadier general H. Judson Kilpatrick sets out toward Union general Benjamin F. Butler's lines on the Peninsula following his failed raid on Richmond. Large numbers of slaves follow in the wake of the Union column.
March 4, 1864, 4 p.m.
Union general H. Judson Kilpatrick returns to Union lines, marking the end of his and Ulric Dahlgren's failed raid on Richmond.
March 5, 1864
Richmond newspapers run reports of the "Dahlgren Papers," found on the body of Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren after he was killed in a failed raid on the Confederate capital.
April 4, 1864
In light of the fiasco that was the Kilpatrick—Dahlgren Raid, Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant relieves Army of the Potomac cavalry commander Alfred Pleasonton from duty and replaces him with Philip H. Sheridan. H. Judson Kilpatrick loses his division and takes command of a brigade.
April 16, 1864
In response to a query from Confederate general Robert E. Lee, Union general George G. Meade questions Union general H. Judson Kilpatrick as to the authenticity of the so-called Dahlgren Papers. Kilpatrick tells Meade that he had no knowledge of the incendiary orders.
FURTHER READING
  • Jones, Virgil Carrington. Eight Hours Before Richmond. New York: Holt, 1957.
  • Longacre, Edward G. Lincoln’s Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–1865. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000.
  • Martin, Samuel J. “Kill-Cavalry,” Sherman’s Merchant of Terror: The Life of Union General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996.
  • Sears, Stephen W. Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
  • Starr, Stephen Z. The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: Volume II: The War in the East from Gettysburg to Appomattox, 1863–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
  • Varon, Elizabeth R. Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
CITE THIS ENTRY
APA Citation:
Luebke, Peter. Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/kilpatrick-dahlgren-raid.
MLA Citation:
Luebke, Peter. "Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 02 Oct. 2023
Last updated: 2020, December 07
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