The Real Custer (19 page)

Custer had to move quickly before the jaws of the trap closed. He rushed his command toward Burton's Ford and fired on the rebels with his two Parrot guns before leading a spirited charge that pushed them back. As the rebels consolidated their line and hurried men to the scene for the expected fight, Custer suddenly broke contact and wheeled his horsemen down the Standardsville Road toward Banks Mill Ford on the Rappahannock. He outran the pursuing rebels and crossed the undefended ford without incident.
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“By a series of brilliant movements,” the
Soldier's Journal
reported, “including some fine charges and sharp fighting, our men got safely off.”
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The
New York Herald
wrote that General Custer “met another force of the enemy, and, after several dashing charges, drove them off.”
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The
Richmond Whig
made light of accounts by “Yankee letter writers” of Custer's bravery in the operation, saying he only fought because he “got lost” and was forced to make a stand. The
Whig
said accounts of his victorious charges were “the stereotyped form of Yankee lying” and that Custer owed less to “cold steel” than to “his two pieces of cannon and the heels of his horses.”
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But Custer completed his mission in fine fashion, doing significant damage to the Confederate rear and capturing fifty prisoners and five hundred horses. He adapted to shifting circumstances
and brought his command back safely, suffering only four troopers wounded and none killed.

For Kilpatrick's raiders, things were going less smoothly. The main body of about four thousand set off on the evening of the twenty-eighth, moving quietly to maintain the element of surprise. They reached Spotsylvania the next morning, and Dahlgren's force of 460 split off for the swing around Richmond. “The men are in good spirits,” a reporter wrote, “the weather excellent for campaigning, and the rebels are doubtless taken by surprise, with the bulk of their army away on furlough or looking for something to eat.”
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That evening Kilpatrick's column crossed the North Anna River and burned Beaver Dam Station, an important railhead. But they failed to halt a train departing for Richmond, which may have been the same train that Dahlgren's force missed upriver at Frederick Hall Station. By one account Robert E. Lee was aboard and “narrowly escaped capture.”
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The passengers reached Richmond that day and spread news of the approaching Yankee raiders.

Northern papers also starting running stories on the supposedly secret mission. Kilpatrick took reporters with him, and on March 1, as the raiders drove deep into enemy territory, the
New York World
reported Kilpatrick was moving on Richmond with a large force of cavalry “in the hope of capturing that city by a coup de main, or compel Lee to leave his entrenchments at Mine Run, and march to its defense.”
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The
New York Herald
said that Kilpatrick was “speeding towards Richmond” and mused that the city “has so many times seemed ready to fall a prey to whosoever would ‘grasp it like a man of mettle,'” implying that Kilpatrick was the daring soul who would finally succeed.
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By the time that report appeared, Kilpatrick had sped to Richmond's defenses. He swept through the outer line of skirmishers then paused, listening for sounds of Dahlgren's fight inside the city. Kilpatrick fired artillery and waited for a response, which was to be the signal to burst
through the inner rebel lines, link up with Dahlgren, and sow panic in Richmond before withdrawing down the peninsula to safety. But there were no sounds of battle or signs of buildings burning, and the only alarm appeared due to the presence of his forces on the city's outskirts.

“The goal was in sight,” James Kidd recalled. “That a dash into the city, or at least an attempt would be made nobody doubted.”
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Kilpatrick's men skirmished with the rebel defenders, and it seemed the prize was ready to be taken. However, with no evidence Dahlgren was in the city, Kilpatrick seemed to fade. At that critical juncture, he was “overcome with a strange and fatal irresolution,” Kidd wrote.
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It was the first indication that the raid might end in failure. J. W. Landern, one of Kilpatrick's scouts, said that until then the commander had “resolutely and skillfully carried out the plan,” but at that point “he was ‘not in it.' He did not seem to be himself.” Kilpatrick had been complaining of not feeling well, and Landern said he “always thought his illness the cause of the feeble effort made to enter Richmond.”
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At 3:00 p.m., after several hours waiting, Kilpatrick ordered his men to withdraw and regroup further east to let the situation clarify. The men were “tired, hungry, and disappointed,” Landern recalled, “having had no sleep and but little rest for more than 48 hours.”
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They were chilled by intermittent rain and sleet, and gratefully set up camp at nightfall, awaiting news of Dahlgren.

Around 10:00 p.m. Kilpatrick's men were readying to head back toward Richmond when gunfire erupted on the perimeter. Wade Hampton's Confederate cavalry boldly charged in among them, and soon the camp was in chaos. Unbeknownst to Kilpatrick, rebel horsemen had been on his trail since the day after he set out. “The surprise was admirably effected,” the
Staunton Spectator
reported. “Gen. Hampton was in advance, and he was fired upon by one of the enemy's videttes, which was the signal of the alarm. A wild panic immediately took place in the Yankee camp; the horses stampeded, and a scene of indescribable confusion
ensued.”
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Hampton “furiously attacked our camp,” Landern said, “and we were obliged to get.” After a brief, sharp fight, and still with no word from Dahlgren, Kilpatrick withdrew his force toward Williamsburg.
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A few days later, when Kilpatrick was safely down the peninsula, a small, bedraggled group from Dahlgren's force finally appeared, led by Captain Mitchell. They bore grim news of the fate of their column. Dahlgren's force had moved south as planned, taking prisoners and capturing rebel supply wagons. The roads were muddy from the driving rain, making passage difficult, and they were uncertain where to make the critical James River crossing. But their guide, a freed slave from the area named Martin Robinson, assured them they could ford the James near Dover Mills.

Dahlgren's force was delayed a few hours at the plantation of the Confederate secretary of war, James Seddon, freeing his slaves and assisting them in looting the property. But when the raiders arrived at the riverbank, it was clear they would not get across; the James at that point was so swollen by rain it had become easily navigable, demonstrated by a sloop they watched sail by. Dahlgren was furious. Lieutenant H. A. D. Merritt of the 5th New York Cavalry related that the young colonel accused the freedman Robinson of “betraying us, destroying the whole design of the expedition, and hazarding the lives of every one engaged in it.” Dahlgren informed Robinson he was to be hanged. The freedman begged for his life, claiming it was all a misunderstanding, but to no avail. “A halter strap was used for the purpose,” Lieutenant Merritt recorded, “and we left the miserable wretch dangling by the roadside.”
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Unable to cross the James without going miles upstream and doubling back, Dahlgren proceeded down the river road toward Richmond. He halted seven miles from the city, within sight of the outer works. His men could hear Kilpatrick's guns, and Dahlgren sent scouts to try to communicate with the main force, but they did not return. Yet even with
the raid plan in tatters, Dahlgren mounted an attack and managed to penetrate the Richmond city limits.

Opposition soon coalesced, and Dahlgren withdrew, heading north. His men fought a skirmish at the farm of Benjamin Greene in northwest Richmond, then headed east in search of Kilpatrick as the evening deepened. “No one engaged in that night's search will ever forget its difficulties,” Lieutenant Merritt wrote. “The storm had set in with renewed fury. The fierce wind drove the rain, snow and sleet. The darkness was rendered intense by the thick pines which overgrew the road, and which dashed into our faces almost an avalanche of water at every step.”
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Around the time Kilpatrick was locked in a fight with Wade Hampton's men, Dahlgren and his band had moved past them to the north and were thirty miles east of Richmond, across the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers, south of the crossroads town of Stevensville. But a band from the 9th Virginia Cavalry under the command of Lieutenant James Pollard, augmented by civilian volunteers, had caught up to them and blocked their way. When the rebels challenged Dahlgren, he fired his pistol and was met by a volley in return.

“Every tree was occupied,” Lieutenant Merritt wrote, “and the bushes poured forth a sheet of fire.”
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Dahlgren went down immediately. “The Yankees attempted to charge through our lines, the charge being headed by Dahlgren himself,” the
Staunton Spectator
reported. “He was shot dead before his column came in contact with our lines.”
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The rest of the command scattered. Many were captured, but enough made it back to Federal lines to tell the tale.

The Richmond raid was a failure, but the controversy had only just begun. A thirteen-year-old member of the Richmond home guard found papers on Dahlgren written in his hand calling for unrestrained violence once inside the city. With “the [Union] prisoners loose and over the river, the bridges will be secured and the city destroyed,” he wrote. “The men
must keep together and well in hand, and once in the city, it must be destroyed, and Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed.”
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The Dahlgren papers were printed in newspapers throughout the South and created a firestorm of debate. This apparent appeal to unlimited warfare was unprecedented in the war. Fitzhugh Lee in his report on Dahlgren's death decried the “ridiculous and unsoldierly raid” and the “insane attempt to destroy Richmond and kill Jeff. Davis and cabinet.”
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Washington quickly denied that the purpose of the raid was to assassinate members of the Confederate government, and General Meade said that the papers, if genuine, were Dahlgren's idea, and not official orders. Kilpatrick said the papers were fabricated “and published only as an excuse for the barbarous treatment of the remains of a brave soldier.”
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Kilpatrick was referring to a story that Dahlgren's body had been mistreated by the rebels. This was not true, and the body was returned unmolested. But Ulric's prosthetic leg went missing; it wound up on display in a Richmond department store window.

Kilpatrick and his command were shipped to Alexandria to convalesce, and while there one of his troopers added to the general's woes by killing a black sentry who was trying to enforce an order against carrying weapons inside city limits. But the Dahlgren affair was the end for Kilpatrick in the East. He was relieved of command and sent west, and by May he was commanding Sherman's cavalry for the upcoming march through Georgia. “I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool,” Sherman said, “but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition.”

Once again Custer glided over it all. He was supposed to have played only a supporting role in the operation, but wound up enjoying another round of national fame. Compared to the failure and scandal of the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid, Custer's diversionary maneuver, in which he evaded superior forces and completed his mission with his command
intact, looked like a work of genius. Official Washington needed a hero to take the sting away from the high-profile disaster, and Custer was made to order. He was received by the president and members of Congress and praised in the press.

“It astonishes me to see the attention with which he is treated everywhere,” Libbie wrote to her parents in March. “One day at the House he was invited to go on the floor, and the members came flocking round to be presented. . . . The President knew all about him when Autie was presented and talked to him about his graduation.”
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George and Libbie were a hit on the Washington social circuit—a young, attractive, and engaging couple. George's rugged soldierly authenticity and practiced humility were well balanced by Libbie's beauty and sharp wit. When Libbie met Congressman Bingham, she joked, “Mr. Bingham, I want to thank you for transforming my husband from a wood-chopper into a general of the United States Army.”
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Libbie was impressed with the way George was received around town and said she found it “very agreeable to be the wife of a man so generally known and respected.”
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Kilpatrick never forgave Custer for outshining him during the war. He served out the rest of the conflict in the West and later had a controversial run as U.S. minister to Chile. Years after the war, George heard Kilpatrick lecturing on the Battle of Gettysburg, altering facts to minimize the role of the Michigan Brigade in stopping Stuart. After the lecture Custer approached Kilpatrick, laughed, and said, “All right Kil, so long as you don't leave me out of the battle entirely.”
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CHAPTER ELEVEN

LITTLE PHIL