9th Virginia Cavalry under the command of Lieutenant James Pollard. Dahlgren was shot by four bullets and died on the battlefield. Several other Union soldiers were killed in the ambush and 135 were captured. Dahlgren affair Dahlgren's body was searched by a 13 year old boy, William Littlepage. He was searching for valuables but found a packet of papers that he gave to his teacher Edward Halbach. The papers were orders to free Union prisoners from Belle Isle, supply them with flammable material and torch the city of Richmond. Union troops were to capture and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. The papers were published in the Richmond Examiner and sparked outrage in the South. The newspapers compared Dahlgren to Atilla the Hun and speculated that Lincoln himself had given the orders. Dahlgren was originally interred where he was shot. An outraged mob disinterred his body and placed it on display at the York River Railroad depot in Richmond. Dahlgren's wooden leg was displayed in a store window and his finger was cut off to remove a ring. These reports of the mistreatment of Dahlgren's corpse inflamed Northern public opinion. Union newspapers claimed the orders were a forgery and Dahlgren's father strongly denied his son would be involved in such a scandal. Union Major General George Meade had to personally assure Confederate General Robert E. Lee that the orders were not sanctioned by the Union Army. The controversy may have contributed to John Wilkes Booth's decision to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln a year later. It was never determined if the orders were written by Dahlgren, Kilpatrick, Edwin M. Stanton or President Lincoln. The papers misspelled Dahlgren's name which casts doubt that they were written by him. After the war, the papers of the Confederate Government were relocated to Washington D.C. The Dahlgren papers were personally requested by Stanton and have not been seen since. Burial After the public display of his corpse, Dahlgren was interred in an unmarked grave at Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond. His father petitioned to have Ulric's body returned for burial in Philadelphia. He made four trips to Fort Monroe to try to arrange an agreement and even contacted the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange to formally request the return of Ulric's remains. The Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew used her connections in Richmond to secretly exhume his remains and reinter them at a farm 10