Davis Kill Jeff Davis

[major bill]

Last week I attended a seminar on the Kilpatrick - Dahlgren Raid. The speaker was Dr. Bruce M. Venter who has an upcoming book coming out on the subject. The seminar would be considered a preview of the book. This leads to the question of why did the Raid fail?

The Raid was a failure.Dr. Venter appears to believe General Butler bore the major responsible for the failure of the Raid. e. With the failure of Butler I am not sure the Raid could have been successful. I have always believed the Raid was too ambitious to completely succeed. If the Raid had been limited to simply freeing the prisoners, it might have had a small chance to be successful, but adding the need to capture Jefferson Davis was an extra mission that distracted the true objective.

 

[James N.]

Since Kilpatrick and Dahlgren never even got close to achieving either objective, I'm not sure what difference any of Butler's actions made. So what did Venter think about Dahlgren's culpability regarding his supposed order to KILL Davis?

 

[major bill]

Although we were not given any quotes from his upcoming book but I am of the opinion that Dr. Venter believes that Dahlgren wrote the order himself. We will have to wait and see how he comes to that conclusion. I am not sure the book will unveil any completely new information on who wrote the order.

For those who do not recognize Venter's name he is the CEO of American History LLC which conducts tours of the Kilpatrick - Dahlgren Raid. I am aware that Venter has wrote a few books, but mostly on the American Revolution and French and Indian War.