Live in Greensboro? You might want to go to this:

The mystery surrounding documents detailing a Union plan to murder Jefferson Davis is put to rest.

By Stephen W. Sears (Excerpts, for the entire story check the link!)

In the winter 1999 issue of Columbiad, James M. McPherson reviewed Duane Schultz's The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War and took note of an article of mine on the same subject that appeared more or less simultaneously in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. In his review, McPherson pointed out that Duane Schultz and I "come down on opposite sides" regarding the authenticity of the so-called Dahlgren papers, the documents at the core of the "Dahlgren affair," as Schultz terms it. After balancing the two sides in the case, McPherson offered the Solomonic judgment that "the genuineness of the Dahlgren papers is contestable...."¹

I will make a case for the genuineness of the Dahlgren papers--and make it strongly enough to remove that "contestable" label. First, however, it is necessary to sketch in the background and the details of what came to be called the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. The raid itself was an utter failure and would merit nothing more than a footnote in Civil War history books except for the intrigue that occurred in its aftermath.

The story of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid ought to have ended on that dismal note--a cavalry raiding force miserably managed by its co-leaders that came nowhere near achieving its purpose of rescuing the prisoners, cost substantially more in men and horses than any damage it inflicted on Confederate communications, and finally, saw one of its co-leaders shot dead and most of his men taken captive. Unfortunately, as matters turned out, that was not the end of the story.

Shortly after the ambush in which Dahlgren was killed, thirteen-year-old William Littlepage, a youthful member of a schoolboy company of home guards, came upon the colonel's body and searched it for valuables. What he found came to be called the Dahlgren papers--two folded documents and a pocket notebook containing several loose papers inserted between the leaves. Young Littlepage turned his find over to his teacher and company commander, Captain Edward W. Halbach. At daylight the next morning, March 3, Halbach examined the papers and was shocked and appalled by what he found.¹¹

The first of the documents, written in ink on Union army stationery bearing the printed heading "Headquarters Third Division, Cavalry Corps," was obviously an address to the officers and men of Colonel Dahlgren's command. It covered two sheets, with the final six lines and the signature written on the back of the first sheet. It was signed, as best Halbach could make it out, "U. Dahlgren, Col. Comd." Among the inspiriting descriptions of their forthcoming mission was one riveting sentence: "We hope to release the prisoners from Belle Island first & having seen them fairly started we will cross the James River into Richmond, destroying the bridges after us & exhorting the released prisoners to destroy & burn the hateful City & do not allow the Rebel Leader Davis and his traitorous crew to escape."

That savage injunction became even more explicit as Captain Halbach read on. The second document, unsigned but written in the same hand on both sides of a sheet of Cavalry Corps stationery, appeared to be a listing of instructions for a party of the raiders that was to operate in parallel with Dahlgren's contingent. Among the instructions was this admonishment: "The men must keep together & well in hand & once in the City it must be destroyed & Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed."

The pocket notebook, which bore Dahlgren's signature and rank on the opening page, contained a draft of his address to the troops, with corrected passages and other marks of composition but including the same murderous instructions as the finished copy. There was also a set of notations referring to planning for the raid and for carrying it out, including the stark direction: "Jeff Davis and Cabinet must be killed on the spot." The loose papers in the notebook contained less deadly instructions and itineraries relating to Dahlgren's mission, plus an order of battle for the Confederate cavalry compiled by the Bureau of Military Information.¹²

The ultimate irony in this sordid tale of villainy and retribution is that it was all so senseless and unnecessary. The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid was a fiasco, its fate sealed from the beginning with the choice of co-leaders. Its bloody secret agenda need never have emerged, at least during the war, but for hot-blooded young Dahlgren's failure to destroy the incriminating papers he was carrying. Judson Kilpatrick, Ulric Dahlgren, and their probable patron Edwin Stanton set out to engineer the death of the Confederacy's president; the legacy spawned out of the utter failure of their effort may have included the death of their own president.