"Dahlgren's Raid on Richmond: The Kilpatrick-Dahlgren..." Topic

… Raid and the Plot Against Jefferson Davis, March 1864

"On leap year eve of February 28, 1864 during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a large Union cavalry raid was launched on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia by the infamous Union cavalry general Hugh J. Kilpatrick (b.1836-1881).

A force of almost 4000 blue jacketed cavalrymen attacked Richmond in and around the James River in an ultimately costly and failed raid which threatened the very heart of the Confederacy. This attack on Richmond can be termed the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid or Dahlgren's Raid by military historians, the former in posthumous honor (or infamy) of the young cavalry officer, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren (b.1842-1864) whose 450 Union raiders nearly succeeded in penetrating the city.

Known to modern historians as the Dahlgren Affair, this failed Union attempt to storm Richmond in order to free Union prisoners of war and to assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet would became arguably one of the most controversial moments of the war between the states, 1861-1865. Modern historiographers have somewhat recently tied together, with a certain degree of accuracy, the chilling connection between the Dahlgren Affair and the later successful assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by Confederate sympathizer and professional actor John Wilkes Booth in April of 1865 after the wars' end…"

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