I don’t think that Dahlgren was ever a motivating factor but rather, because of his youth, ambition and connections – and his obvious courage as evidenced in combat – he was considered a great addition to the raid. Unless I am mistaken, he was surely more of an idealist than Kilpatrick and thus would have pursued the raid as long as there was any hope of its success while K. might have determined that things didn’t look good and turned back to save his own hide.

But the inclusion of Dahlgren must also, I think, implicate more than Stanton. If Stanton was involved – and I don’t for a minute doubt it – the LAST person he would have wanted on any such raid was a young man (or ANY man) close to Lincoln UNLESS LINCOLN ALREADY KNEW OF THE PURPOSE OF THE RAID! If I’m trying to keep something a secret from Mr. Wittenberg, I would not purposefully involve his secretary in the matter lest she let the secret slip either before or after the fact. In the same way, if Lincoln WAS ‘ignorant’ of the raid and/or its purpose and would have been totally opposed to the plan, then you wouldn’t want to use someone like Dahlgren – who, together with his father, was intimate with the President.

Mr. Wittenberg has mentioned that Kilpatrick, despite his other less than sterling qualities, could in fact be discrete. But one has to wonder how poor Ully would have fared under Lincoln’s stern gaze had he returned from a successful raid and accomplished something that so many people assert would have been an anathema to the the President. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Better by far to have let some other person go with Kilpatrick (God knows there were enough such soldiers and officers) who had no problem with the goal of the raid and no connection with Lincoln. As it was, Dahlgren’s very PRESENCE implicates Lincoln simply because of the relationship among the three men – Lincoln, Ully and his father.

The only COUNTERING argument that can be made, to my mind at least, is that Dahlgren was chosen for that very reason – that is, to implicate Lincoln and make it impossible for him to reject the actions taken and rebuke those involved. How could Lincoln have done that to young Dahlgren had he been successful and returned alive? Indeed, how could he even admit that the thing had happened after the young man’s death without implicating himself in the matter?

As for Stanton ‘hiding’ or ‘destroying’ the papers: if he did – and again, I don’t doubt it – he may well have been acting on LINCOLN’s behalf as well as his own. Frankly, I don’t think he was much bothered by the object of the raid and would have accepted Davis’ death as a great victory for the Union. On the other hand, Lincoln’s martyrdom raised him beyond the level of a mere politician (however good) or even a statesman and into the realm of a ‘civil saint’. It could well be that Stanton – who was most moved by the President’s death – might have determined that he would allow nothing to smear Lincoln’s reputation posthumously and so made certain that nothing remained that could be traced to the dead President however indirectly. That makes more sense to me than to suppose that Stanton would have given a fig if people thought he wanted Davis and the Confederate government dead – which, in fact, he probably did!

Was Dahlgren a ‘patsy’? It depends upon what you mean by that. I believe that he supported the raid and its objectives. On the other hand, his choice as a participant is definitely suspect. Was he chosen to implicate (and thus silence) Lincoln or was he chosen BY Lincoln because he thought that they young man had ‘the right stuff’ to do a dangerous and rather dirty deed ‘for the good of the country’? I guess we will never know unless some NEW letter or documents is unearthed.

Interesting comments, as usual.

Wistar did not leave an account of the conversation with Kilpatrick that I have been able to locate. His post-war memoir–a very large book–has a gap in it from the end of his expedition in February 1864 to the beginning of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. It’s almost like he made a conscious choice not to delve into the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid at all.

I think you’re misreading things. After the failure of the K-D Raid, a punitive expedition into King and Queen County was ordered, and I believe Wistar was referring to that. Alternatively, it might have been another instance after the K-D Raid. I don’t read that statement as suggesting that there was only one instance.

I am unaware of any such order being issed to hunt Davis down and kill him. I doubt it would have happened–I think that the Radicals intended to hold a show trial for treason, and Davis was obviously going to be the star of that show. If you hunt him down and kill him, then there’s no show trial.

You are quite right that it is possible that Dahlgren was a patsy.

And you again point out the complexity of this situation and why it is so fascinating.

Eric

Just a couple of questions for clarification (and be devil’s advocate):

Did Wistar himself ever write an account of the discussion he had with Kilpatrick?

Mosby’s account seems to imply that Wistar had been ordered “on a similar expedition” that included killing Davis (Mosby also writes that Wistar stated ‘he refused to go’, when in fact he did go, but failed), does any evidence exist that Wistar was specifically ordered to kill Jeff Davis and Cabinet?
If not, Wistar’s mission is much different than that which is stated in the Dahlgren papers on the important point of murdering the Confederate Government.

When the Confederacy was crumbling and Davis and his cabinet was running for their lives was an order ever issued to hunt them down and kill them? Even after Lincoln was assassinated (and Stanton was arguably in charge), was such an order issued? If not, why not. It certainly would have been easy to kill Davis in the Georgia hinterlands and state later he was killed trying to flee.

Stanton, Butler, Kilpatrick being unsavory individuals can easily be put into such a conspiracy. But by doing so, doesn’t the discussion then move off Dahlgren and his culpability (he simply becomes a pawn in a greater conspiracy ala Oswald)?

That’s just it–for once, Kilpatrick WAS discreet. Other than what Wistar recounted, there is nothing at all documented other than the letter that he wrote disavowing Dahlgren. Just this one time, he kept his mouth shut.

Eric

Fascinating.

Remember, too, that there was something of a rivalry at this time between Butler and Stanton. Butler absolutely had to be kept in the Lincoln camp because he was perhaps the key pro-war Democrat. It was known that he was sniffing out a run for president, and Lincoln sent emissaries to sound him out about the vice presidency and being secretary of war. Butler rebuffed both overtures, preferring to further his ambitions by winning victories on the battlefield (this is in Longacre’s Army of Amateurs). See also my comment on what I found in the Fletcher Pratt biography of Stanton in the long stream of comments in the thread a few weeks ago soliciting our opinions on this matter. In that bio I found that Stanton in this period was up to his elbows in prisioner-of-war matters.

Also, the Wistar expedition was accompanied by a demonstration by the Army of the Potomac at Morton’s Ford. Sedgwick, in command of the army at the time, opposed the move as ruining perhaps the best prospect of crossing the Rapidan and advancing directly on Lee. The high command’s “told you so” approach to this failure probably reinforced the idea that whatever the next step was to be it would have been done outside regular channels.

What intrigues me, and I am sure you have examined this thoroughly, is what, if anything, Kilpatrick said about the raid at the time or afterwards. What led to his being transferred out of the Army of the Potomac? He was just the sort of indiscreet individual who might have said something somewhere that would shed some light.

Bill

The Mosby letter has never been used by anyone before. I believe I am the first to have found and used it. It is in a collection of unedited and unabridged collection of Mosby’s letters that was published by the Stuart-Mosby Historical Society of Richmond, and is not a secondary source in any sense of the word. It’s quite a find, and I’ve been sitting on it for a long time, trying to figure out how best to use it.

As you say, it certainly casts a lot of doubt on Kilpatrick.

Eric