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On leap year eve of February 28, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a large Union cavalry raid was launched on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia by the infamous Union cavalry general, Hugh J. Kilpatrick (b.1836-1881). Dahlgren Attacks Confederate Homeguards, March 1, 1864 A force of almost 4000 blue jacketed cavalrymen attacked Richmond in and around the James River in an ultimately costly and failed raid which threatened the very heart of the Confederacy. This attack on Richmond can be termed the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid or Dahlgren’s Raid by military historians, the former in posthumous honor (or infamy) of the young cavalry officer, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren (b.1842-1864) whose 450 Union raiders nearly succeeded in penetrating Richmond. Known to modern historians as the Dahlgren Affair, this failed Union attempt to storm Richmond in order to free Union prisoners of war and to controversially assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his rebel cabin...

On this day in 1864 the Union Army under the command of General Ambrose Burnsides, (b.1824-1881) in an attempt to break the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia (June 1864-April 1865), exploded an over 500 foot mine dug under Confederate defense in the weeks before in an attempt to overrun General Robert E. Lee's (b.1807-1870) positions. Battle of the Crater, July 30, 1864 Burnsides, the now iconic namesake of sideburns became infamous for this half-cocked, immensely dangerous and ultimately very costly assault. He became the scapegoat and was truly to blame for the disastrous & pointless attacks that followed the explosion of 320 kegs of black powder in the mine dug weeks before by engineers. The explosion failed to open a significant breach anywhere along the Confederate lines. It succeeded in creating a large and relatively deep crater, a sort of canyon or hole which later cost thousands of Union lives during futile charges and assaults to break t...