Inactivity of the Army of Northern Virginia.—Expeditions of Custer, Kilpatrick, and Dahlgren for the Destruction of Railroads, the Burning of Richmond, and Killing the Officers of the Government.— Repelled by Government Clerks.—Papers on Dahlgren's Body.—Repulse of Butler's Raid from Bermuda Hundred.—Advance of Sheridan repulsed at Richmond.—Stuart resists Sheridan.—Stuart's Death.—Remarks on Grant's Plan of Campaign.—Movement of General Butler.—Drury's Bluff.—Battle there.—Campaign of Grant in Virginia.
Both the Army of Northern Virginia and the army under General Meade remained in a state of comparative inaction during the months of January and February, 1864.
On February 26, 1864, while General Lee's headquarters were at Orange Court-House, two corps of the army of the enemy left their camp for Madison Court-House. The object was, by a formidable feint, to engage the attention of General Lee, and conceal from him their plans for a surprise and, if possible, capture of the city of Richmond. This was to be a concerted movement, in which General Butler, in command of the forces on the Peninsula, was to move up and make a demonstration upon Richmond on the east, while Generals Custer and Kilpatrick and Colonel Dahlgren were to attack it and enter on the west and north.
Two days later another army corps left for Madison Court-House, and other forces subsequently followed. At the same time General Custer, with two ten-inch Parrott guns and fifteen hundred picked men, marched for Charlottesville by the James City road. His purpose was to destroy the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, running by Charlottesville to Gordonsville, where the junction was made of the railroad running north from Lynchburg, with the Central running to Richmond. The capture of the army stores there, the destruction of the tracks running south, west, and east, and cutting the telegraph, would have severed the communication between Lee's army and Richmond by that route. This movement, with the destruction of railroads by General Kilpatrick, and of the Central Railroad and the James River and Kanawha Canal by Colonel Dahlgren, would have isolated that army from its base of supplies.
[Illustration: General Wade Hampton]
Three hours later, on the same day on which General Custer started, General Kilpatrick with five thousand picked cavalry and a light battery of six guns, left Stevensburg, near Culpeper Court-House, for the lower fords of the Rapidan. His object was to make a dash upon Richmond for the purpose of releasing the United States prisoners, and doing whatever injury might be possible. He moved rapidly, destroying railroads and depots, and plundering the country, but found no obstacle except in being closely harassed in his rear by Colonel Bradley T. Johnson with his sixty Marylanders, who, with extraordinary daring, activity, and skill, followed him until he reached the line of the defenses of Richmond. There, while attacked in the rear by Colonel Johnson and his pickets driven in, he was at the same time opposed in front by Colonel W. H. Stevens, who, with a detachment of engineer troops, manned a few sections of light artillery. After an engagement of thirty minutes, Kilpatrick's entire force began to retreat in the direction of the Meadow Bridge on the Central Railroad. At night his camp-fires were discovered by General Wade Hampton, who dismounted one hundred men to act as infantry, and, supported by the cavalry, opened his two-gun battery upon the enemy at short range. He then attacked the camp of Davies's and of a part of two other brigades. The camp was taken, and the whole force of Kilpatrick fled at a gallop, leaving one hundred and five prisoners and more than one hundred horses.
Colonel Dahlgren started with General Kilpatrick, but at Spottsylvania Court-House was dispatched with five hundred men to Frederickhall, a depot of the Central Railroad, where some eighty pieces of our reserve artillery had been parked. His orders were to destroy the artillery, the railroads, and telegraph-lines. Finding the artillery too well guarded, he proceeded to destroy the line of railroad as far as Hanover Junction. Thence he moved toward the James River and Kanawha Canal, which he reached twenty-two miles west of Richmond. Thence his command moved toward the city, pillaging and destroying dwelling-houses, out-buildings, mills, canal-boats, grain, and cattle, and cutting one lock on the canal. The first resistance met was by a battalion of General G. W. C. Lee's force, consisting of about two hundred and twenty of the armory-men, under command of their major, Ford. This small body was driven back until it joined a battalion of the Treasury Department clerks, who, in the absence of their major, Henly, were led by Captain McIlhenney. The officers and men were all clerks of the Treasury Department, and, like those of other departments and many citizens of Richmond, who were either too old or too young to be in the army, were enrolled and organized to defend the capital in the absence of troops. Captain McIlhenney, as soon as he saw the enemy, promptly arranged to attack. This was done with such impetuosity that Dahlgren and his men wore routed, leaving some eighteen killed, twenty to thirty wounded, and as many more prisoners. About a hundred horses, with equipments, a number of small-arms, and one three-inch Napoleon gun were captured. Our loss was one captain and two lieutenants killed, three lieutenants and seven privates wounded—one of the latter mortally. This feat of the Clerks' Battalion commanded the grateful admiration of the people, and the large concourse that attended the funeral of the fallen expressed the public lamentation.
Dahlgren now commenced his retreat. To increase the chances of escape, the force was divided, he leading one party in the direction of King and Queen County. The home guard of the country turned out against the raiders, and, being joined by a detachment from the Forty-second Battalion of Virginia Cavalry and some furloughed cavalry-men of Lee's army, surprised and attacked the retreating column of Dahlgren, killed the leader, and captured nearly one hundred prisoners, with negroes, horses, etc.
On the body of Dahlgren was found an address to his officers and men, another paper giving special orders and instructions, and one giving his itinerary, the whole disclosing the unsoldierly means and purposes of the raid, such as disguising the men in our uniform, carrying supplies of oakum and turpentine to burn Richmond, and, after releasing their prisoners on Belle Isle, to exhort them to destroy the hateful city, while on all was impressed the special injunction that the city must be burned, and "Jeff Davis and Cabinet killed."
The prisoners, having been captured in disguise, were, under the usages of war, liable to be hanged as spies, but their protestations that their service was not voluntary, and the fact that as enlisted men they were subject to orders, and could not be held responsible for the infamous instructions under which they were acting, saved them from the death-penalty they had fully incurred. Photographic copies of the papers found on Dahlgren's body were taken and sent to General Lee, with instructions to communicate them to General Meade, commanding the enemy's forces in his front, with an inquiry as to whether such practices were authorized by his Government, and also to say that, if any question was raised as to the copies, the original paper would be submitted. No such question was then made, and the denial that Dahlgren's conduct had been authorized was accepted.