The Dahlgren Affair: Terror and Conspiracy in the Civil War

March 5, 1864, was the day on which the Civil War changed to what the Richmond Examiner called a war of extermination, of indiscriminate slaughter and plunder. It changed because of a few sheets of paper found on a muddy trail outside Richmond. Their legacy was a new and terrible style of warfare. In a daring but failed cavalry raid to free thousands of Union prisoners, the Union commander-twenty-one-year-old Ulric Dahlgren-was killed; on his body were found orders purportedly instructing his men to find and execute Jefferson Davis and the rest of the Confederate cabinet. There was an immediate outpouring of horrified, indignant rage throughout the South, and after the Union disclaimed any knowledge of the papers or the order they contained, Jefferson Davis authorized the use of terrorism against civilians in the North in the form of guerrilla raids, bank robberies, arson, and sabotage. This compelling narrative is the first full-length analysis of the link between Dahlgren’s failed raid and the Confederate campaign of terror. [A] wonderfully vivid portrait of Confederate attempts to stir up rebellion in the North during the war’s waning days… . Schultz handles all of this melodramatic material with vigor and clarity, a first-rate addition to the bulging shelves of Civil War Studies. -Kirkus Reviews