"Do not allow any personal gain to lead you off, which would only bring you to an ignominious death at the hands of citizens. Keep well together, and obey orders strictly and all will be well, but on no account scatter too far; for in union there is strength. "With strict obedience to orders, and fearlessness in the execution, you will be sure to succeed. "We will join the main force on the other side of the city, or perhaps meet them inside. "Many of you may fall; but if there is any man here not willing to sacrifice his life in such a great and glorious undertaking, or who does not feel capable of meeting the enemy in such a desperate fight as will follow, let him step out, and he may go hence to the arms of his sweetheart, and read of the braves who swept through the city of Richmond. "We want no man who cannot feel sure of success in such a holy cause. "We will have a desperate fight; but stand up to it when it does come, and all will be well. "Ask the blessing of the Almighty, and do not fear the enemy. "U. DAHLGREN, It might be supposed that the Richmond authorities would have attempted some substantial retaliation, in view of these murderous and incendiary disclosures, and would have treated those of Dahlgren's raiders who had been captured as the felons they really were. But President Davis was weak and melodramatic on the subject of retaliation; a distinct victim had never yet been exacted for innumerable murders and massacres committed by the enemy; a single act of substantial retaliation had never been done by the Confederate Administration; and now the utterly absurd and puerile notice in Richmond of the Dahlgren raid was to bury the body of its leader in a concealed grave, and to put several tons of powder under the Libby Prison to intimidate its inmates. Such stupid melodrama is almost incredible in the head of a great government, and merely gave occasion to the enemy to exclaim about "rebel barbarities," and to surround with romance a deed of villainy from which the public, without such appeals to their interest and sympathy, would have turned with aversion. Indeed so far did the misrepresentation and hypocrisy of the North go on this subject, that the authenticity of the papers found on Dahlgren was denied, and with that singular disposition of Northern newspapers to interpret as heroism, and entitle as fame, the worst villainies of the war, and its most ruthless and comprehensive works of destruction, the name of Ulric Dahlgren was written as "the young hero of the North," who had been "assassinated" on the path to glory. The authenticity of "the Dahlgren Papers "-the most important only of which we have copied above-is probably no longer a question with the intelligent. But to put it beyond all dispute, we annex here detailed statement of the circumstances of the discovery of these papers obtained from the living witness under whose eye they first came: STATEMENT OF EDWARD W. HALBACH IN RELATION TO "THE DAHLGREN PAPERS." "In the summer of 1863, I, Edward W. Halbach, was living at Stevensville, in King and Queen County, Virginia. I had already been exempted from military service on account of the condition of my health, and was now exempt as a schoolmaster having the requisite number of pupils. But feeling it my duty to do what I could to encounter the raids of the enemy, I determined to form a company of my pupils between the ages of thirteen and seventeen years. My commission and papers prove that the company was formed, and accepted by the President for "Local Defence." A member of this company, thirteen years of age at the time, captured the notorious "Dahlgren Papers." The name of this boy is William Littlepage. "Littlepage and myself were at Stevensville when the rangers passed that place on their way to the appointed place of ambush. Being determined to participate in the affair, we set off on foot, having no horses to ride, and reached the rendezvous a little after dark. The Yankees came up in a few hours, and were fired on. Immediately after this fire, and while it was still doubtful whether the enemy would summon up courage enough to advance again, in a word, before any one else ventured to do so, Littlepage ran out into the road, and, finding a "dead Yankee" there, proceeded to search his pockets to see, as he said, if he might not be fortunate enough to find a watch. The little fellow wanted to own a watch, and, as the Yankees had robbed me, his teacher, of a gold watch a short time before, I suppose he concluded that there would be no harm in his taking a watch from a "dead Yankee; " but his teacher always discouraged any feeeling of this kind in his pupils. Littlepage failed to secure the prize by not looking in the overcoat pockets, and the watch (for there was really one) was found afterwards by Lieut. Hart. But in searching the pockets of the inner garments, Littlepage did find a segar-case, a memorandum-box, etc. "When the Yankees had been driven back and thrown into a panic by the suddenness of our fire and the darkness of the night, a Confederate lieutenant, whom the enemy had captured at Frederick Hall, embraced the opportunity presented to make his escape, and actually succeeded in getting over to our side. We could, by this time, hear the enemy galloping rapidly over the field, and arrangements were soon made to prevent their possible escape. Our force determined to go down the road towards King and Queen Court-House, and barricade it. "But, as before mentioned, myself and the only member of my company had with me, were on foot, and unable to keep up with the horsemen. It was therefore decided that the prisoners whom we had captured should be left in my charge. In the confusion, however, all the prisoners had been carried off by others, save the one claiming to be a Confederate officer, which he afterwards proved to be-and a gallant one at that. But, under the circumstances, I felt compelled to treat him as an enemy, until time should prove him a friend. "Wishing to find a place of safety, and feeling that it would be hazardous for so small a party to take any of the public roads (for we knew not how many more Yankees there were, nor in what direction they might come), I decided to go into the woods a STATEMENT OF EDWARD W. HALBACH 505 short distance, and there spend the night. My party consisted of myself, Littlepage, the "lieutenant," and several other gentlemen of King and Queen County. We walked into the woods about a quarter of a mile, and sat down. "Up to this time, we had not even an intimation of the name and rank of the officer commanding the enemy. In fact, we felt no curiosity to know. All we cared for was to punish as severely as possible the raiders with whom we were contending. We knew that one man was killed, but knew not who he was. We were just getting our places for the night, and wrapping up with blankets, garments, etc., such as we had, for the ground was freezing, and we dared not make a fire, when Littlepage pulled out a segar-case, and said: 'Mr. Halbach, will you have a segar?' 'No,' said I; but where did you get segars these hard times?' He replied that he had got them out of the pocket of the Yankee who had been killed, and that he had also taken from the same man a memorandum-book and some papers. 'Well,' said I, 'William, you must give me the papers, and you may keep the segar-case.' "Littlepage then remarked that the dead Yankee had a wooden leg. Here the Lieutenant, greatly agitated, exclaimed: 'How do you know he has a wooden leg?' 66 6 “‘I know he has,' replied Littlepage, 'because I caught hold of it, and tried to pull it off.' "There!' replied the Lieutenant, 'you have killed Col. Dahlgren, who was in command of the enemy. His men were devoted to him, and I would advise you all to take care of yourselves now, for if the Yankees catch you with anything belonging to him, they will certainly hang us all to the nearest tree.' "Of course it was impossible for us to learn the contents of the papers, without making a light to read them by, or waiting till the next morning. We did the latter; and, as soon as day broke, the papers were read, and found to contain every line and every word as afterwards copied into the Richmond newspapers. Dahlgren's name was signed to one or more of the papers, and also written on the inside of the front cover of his memorandum-book. Here the date of purchase, I suppose, was added. The book had been written with a degree of haste clearly indicated by the frequent interlineations and corrections, but the orders referred to had also been re-written on a separate sheet of paper; and, as thus copied, were published to the world. Some of the papers were found loose in Dahlgren's pockets, others were between the leaves of the memorandumbook. "The papers thus brought to light were preserved by myself in the continual presence of witnesses of unquestionable veracity, until about two o'clock in the afternoon of the day after their capture; at which time myself and party met Lieut. Pollard, who, up to this time, knew nothing in the world of the existence of the Dahlgren Papers. At his request, I let him read the papers; after doing which he requested me to let him carry them to Richmond. At first, I refused, for I thought that I knew what to do with them quite as well as any one else. But I was finally induced, by my friends, against my will, to surrender the papers to Lieut. Pollard, mainly in consideration of the fact that they would reach Richmond much sooner through him than through a semi-weekly mail. The papers which were thus handed over to the Confederate Government-I state it againwere correctly copied by the Richmond newspapers. A thousand and one falsehoods have been told about this affair-by our own men as well as by the Yankees. Some of our own men were actuated by motives of selfishness and ambition to claim each one for himself the whole credit of the affair; when, in fact, the credit belongs to no particular individual, but, collectively, to the whole of our party. We were a strange medley of regulars, raw troops, old farmers, preachers, schoolboys But I believe that all present did their duty, only to find that all the credit was etc. afterwards claimed, with a considerable degree of success among the ignorant, by those who were not present. "The credit of the command of our party belongs alone to Capt. Fox, than whom there was no more chivalric spirit in either army. In making this statement, I am actuated only by a desire to do justice to the memory of one who was too unassuming to sound his own trumpet. I am also told, by soldiers, that Lieut. Pollard deserves a considerable degree of credit, for the part he played in following and harassing the enemy up to the time they took the right fork of the road near Butler's Tavern. "You are, of course, aware of the fact that the enemy has always denied the allthenticity of the Dahlgren Papers, and declared them to be forgeries. utter absurdity and falsehood of such a charge, I submit the following: To prove the "1. The papers were taken by Littlepage from the person of a man whose name he had never heard. It was a dark night, and the captor, with the aid of the noon-day sun, could not write at all. I afterwards taught him to write a little in my school. "The question occurs: Can a boy who cannot write at all, write such papers, and sign to them an unknown name? If they had been forged by any one else, would they have been placed in the hands of a child? Could any one else have forged an unknown and unheard of name? "2. The papers were handed to me immediately after their capture, in the presence of gentlemen of undoubted integrity and veracity, before whom I can prove that the papers not only were not, but could not have been, altered or interpolated by myself. These gentlemen were with me every moment of the time between my receiving the papers and my delivering them to Lieut. Pollard. "3. If Lieut. Pollard had made any alterations in the papers, these would have been detected by every one who read the papers before they were given to him, and afterwards read them in the newpapers. But all agree that they were correctly copied. In short, human testimony cannot establish any fact more fully than the fact that Col. Ulric Dahlgren was the author of the " Dahlgren Papers." "With regard to the part taken by myself in this affair, I lay no claim to any credit. I do not write this version of the affair to gain notoriety. I have made it a rule not to mention my own name, except in cases where I found that false impressions were being made upon the public mind. You know very well that my being Littlepage's captain entitled me to claim the capture of the papers for myself. But this I have never done And, even when called upon by Gen. Fitz. Lee to give my affidavit to the authenticity of the papers, I wrote him word that Littlepage was the captor of them. In his letter te Lieut. Pollard, which was forwarded to me, he asked: Who is Capt. Halbach?' I replied, for myself, that I was nothing more than the humble captain of a company of school-boys, and that if I deserved any credit, it was only so much as he might choose to give me for preserving the papers, when advised to destroy them, to avoid being captured with them in my possession, which, I was told, would result in the hanging of our little party. "I have never given the information herein contained before, because I had hoped that it would be given to the public by others, and I give it now, because I regard it as a duty to do so. My own course, after the killing of Dahlgren, was as follows: I joined those who agreed to bury him decently in a coffin, and in compliance with a promise made to a scout by the name of Hogan, I prepared a neat little head-board with my own hands, to mark his grave. This was not put up, because the messenger from Mr. Davis for the body of Dahlgren arrived while we were taking it out of the ground where i had been hastily buried." CHAPTER XXXI. OPENING OF THE GREAT SPRING CAMPAIGN OF 1864.-EXPLANATION OF RENEWED CONFIDENE IN Ir is remarkable that at the opening of the great spring campaign of 1864, there should have simultaneously prevailed at Washington the opinion that the operations of the year would certainly restore the Union, and |