Dahlgren affair
The Dahlgren affair was an incident during the American Civil War which stemmed from a failed Union raid on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia in March 1864.
Brigadier General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren led an attack on Richmond to free Union prisoners from Belle Isle and damage Confederate infrastructure.
Papers discovered on his body purportedly revealed orders to free Union prisoners from Belle Isle, arm them with flammable material, torch the city of Richmond while also carrying out a decapitation strike of the Confederate government by assassinating President Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet.
The controversy is known to have caused Davis and his cabinet to authorize Thomas Hines to unleash the total war of the Northwest Conspiracy behind Union lines and may also have contributed to John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln.
It has never been determined if the papers were forged or if not, who they were written by, although historian Stephen W. Sears points to the "unscrupulous" Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton as the authority behind the plan to have the freed Richmond prisoners commit arson and assassination.
[2] Kilpatrick and Dahlgren led the operation to attack Richmond, Virginia; rescue Union prisoners from Belle Isle and damage Confederate infrastructure.
[2] Dahlgren's forces were led to a ford on the James River near Dover Mills but were unable to cross due to high water from recent rains.
They heard the sound of battle and rushed to support Kilpatrick but ran directly into a Confederate Home Guard force which halted their advance.
On the night of March 3rd, Dahlgren and a portion of his troops were ambushed near King and Queen Court House by 150 men in the Virginia cavalry under the command of Lieutenant James Pollard.
[6] The papers were orders to free Union prisoners from Belle Isle, supply them with flammable material and torch the city of Richmond.
According to other sources, such as Alexandria Gazette, October 16, 1865,[7] it was Major Heros von Borcke who led the party which killed Ulric Dahlgren and who searched the body and found the papers, and his lieutenant handed them to Fitzhugh Lee.
Davis quietly read through the documents in Lee's presence and paused when he reached the assassination order, he remarked, "That means you, Mr.
Historian Stephen W. Sears points to the "unscrupulous" Stanton as the probable authority behind the plan to have the freed Richmond prisoners commit arson and assassination.
[17] Nonetheless, some historians, such as Duane Schultz in The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War, continued to argue that the papers were forged and intended to justify the numerous state terrorism plots by the Confederate Secret Service, such as the arson attack against New York City, the Northwest Conspiracy, and repeated efforts to kidnap Lincoln and blow up the White House.
However, a new handwriting study performed on the papers by the Smithsonian Channel seems to confirm that the documents are authentic, and the theory is that, despite official denials, it was Stanton who issued the assassination orders.
