Dahlgren Affair The Dahlgren Affair was an incident in the American Civil War involving a failed Union raid on the Confederate capital of Richmond , Virginia on March 2 , 1864 . According to mysterious papers found on the body of the raid ' s commanding officer , Colonel Ulric Dahlgren , one of their mission objectives was to assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet . History . Ulric Dahlgren was killed outside of Richmond , near the King & Queen County Court House , on March 2 during a bungled raid on the Confederate capital , ostensibly to free Union prisoners . ( " See Battle of Walkerton " ) . Late that evening thirteen - year - old William Littlepage discovered Dahlgren ' s body and searched its pockets for a pocketwatch . Instead he found a pocketbook and two folded papers , which he promptly turned over to his teacher Edward W . Halbach , a captain in the Confederate Virginia Home Guard . Halbach examined the papers the next morning , discovering that they contained signed orders on Union army stationery for a plot to assassinate Davis . According to one of the papers : Halbach immediately contacted his commander , Captain Richard H . Bagby , and informed him of the discovery . At 2 p . m . on March 3 Bagby transferred the papers to Lieutenant James Pollard with instructions to deliver them to his commander Col . Richard L . T . Beale . Beale instructed that they be delivered to the Confederate command in Richmond immediately . Pollard arrived in Richmond at noon on March 4 and delivered the papers to General Fitzhugh Lee . Lee , astonished at their contents , immediately took the papers to President Davis and Secretary of State Judah P . Benjamin . Davis quietly read through the documents in Lee ' s presence and paused when he reached the assassination order , remarking " That means you , Mr . Benjamin . " Lee was then instructed to take the papers to the War Department where they were received by Secretary of War James A . Seddon . Seddon decided to release the documents publicly and sought Davis ' approval to do so . The Richmond newspapers were contacted for a conference at the War Department and given copies of the orders , which were published the next morning on March 5 . In coming months the papers were widely circulated in the Confederacy and in Europe as evidence of Union barbarism . Dahlgren was likened to Attila the Hun and several Union leaders were accused of participation in the plot up to and including President Abraham Lincoln . In the North , the papers were denounced as a forgery designed to weaken the Union ' s war effort . Dahlgren Paper authenticity . For many years a debate has waged over the authenticity of the Dahlgren Papers . Part of the mystery stems from the fact that the papers have not survived and appear to have been intentionally destroyed by Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1865 . The papers were among a collection of important Confederate documents transferred to Washington after the surrender of Robert E . Lee ' s Army of Northern Virginia . Stanton ordered Francis Lieber to remove the Dahlgren Papers from the Confederate files and deliver them to him personally . He then presumably destroyed them as they have not been seen since . Surviving records include transcripts of the documents , which were published in several newspapers , photographs of them that were provided by Lee to Union general George Meade for investigation , and a lithograph based on the photographs that was made in Europe where Confederate agents circulated the document to stir up sympathy for their cause . Unfortunately the destruction of the records by Stanton has prevented their examination in modern times and restricted historical knowledge of them to the surviving copies and examinations conducted between March 5 , 1864 and November 1865 when Stanton seized the papers . A leading proponent of the forgery allegation was Admiral John A . Dahlgren , Ulric ' s father , who spent the rest of his life trying to clear his son ' s name . The senior Dahlgren based his argument against their authenticity on a European lithograph of the orders in which his son ' s name was misspelled " Dalhgren . " The source of this error was discovered after the admiral ' s death by former Confederate general Jubal A . Early , who discovered the source of the error while studying the photographs . The lithographer , working from the photographs , mistook the " l " for an " h " and transposed the two due to ink marks that bled through from the other side of the paper . After the controversy surrounding the documents developed , Union Brig . Gen . Judson Kilpatrick , who authorized the Dahlgren raid , was questioned by General Meade about the photographs sent by Lee . Kilpatrick indicated to Meade that the papers were indeed authentic as he had seen them when conferring with Dahlgren , but claimed that the Confederates had altered them to include the assassination order . Meade officially replied to Lee that " neither the United States Government , myself , nor General Kilpatrick authorized , sanctioned , or approved the burning of the city of Richmond and the killing of Mr . Davis and cabinet , " placing the blame solely on Dahlgren . Privately however , Meade confided to his wife that " Kilpatrick ' s reputation , and collateral evidence in my possession , rather go against this theory " that Dahlgren alone devised the conspiracy . In addition to Meade ' s private beliefs , the papers ' authenticity is corroborated by statements from Bureau of Military Information officers John McEntee , who accompanied Dahlgren on the raid and thus saw the papers , and John Babcock . It is further noted that the custody of the papers from their discovery by Littlepage on March 2 to their delivery to Davis on March 4 is well documented . The short period of time between their transfer from Littlepage to Davis reduces the time in which a skilled forger could be found . Though the papers have long been disputed , recent scholarship by historians including Stephen W . Sears and Edward Steers , Jr . has tended to favor their authenticity , though few who believe in their authenticity contend they were written by anyone other than Dahlgren himself . Early theory about the ink bleed through causing the misspelling was recently proven by the Smithsonian who through laser research proved that indeed it was a bleed through and the papers were / are authentic . One theory about the Lincoln Assassination holds that the Dahlgren Papers ' discovery instigated the chain of events ending in John Wilkes Booth ' s murder of Abraham Lincoln the next year . Steers , in his history of the assassination " Blood on the Moon , " traces the assassination conspiracy ' s origins to this event . Though they offer a different theory of the assassination that is bitterly at odds with Steers ' interpretation , Ray Neff and Leonard Guttridge also agree on the Dahlgren affair ' s role . Sears summarizes the relationship between Dahlgren and Booth as follows :