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Captured during Dahlgren’s Raid
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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136 Surgeon Samuel Tilden Kingston, Second New York Cavalry Carte de visite by Mathew B. Brady (b. ca. 1823, d. 1896) of New York City and Washington, D.C., about 1863 137 Captured during Dahlgren’s Raid On February 28, 1864, Union Col. Ulric Dahlgren210 and 500 cavalrymen left Stevensburg, Virginia, on a daring raid. They planned to ride into Richmond and unite with 3,600 troops led by Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick,211 liberate prisoners, and destroy Confederate supplies. The raid went wrong two days later, after Kilpatrick ran into stiff resistance and withdrew, leaving Dahlgren isolated. Lt. Reuben Bartley,212 Dahlgren’s staff officer, recalled driving the rebels inside Richmond’s defensive line of works, but “it soon got too hot, and he sounded the retreat, leaving forty men on the field.”213 Assistant Surgeon Samuel Kingston of the Second New York Cavalry stayed with the injured and was captured. The raid failed a few days later, costing Dahlgren his life. Papers ordering the assassination of President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet were found on his body and caused indignation throughout the Confederacy. Kingston and the other prisoners were viewed with suspicion, and their treatment was harsh. Kingston was interred in Richmond’s Libby Prison, where he joined five officers, including Lt. Bartley, who was captured the night after Kingston was taken. Bartley remembered that the group were “put into a Dungeon in the cellar of the prison and informed that we had been condemned to death as Felons. This news appeared to have a very depressing effect on Dr. Kingston .”214 Lt. Col. Allyne Litchfield215 of the Seventh Michigan Cavalry , another inmate, recalled being thrust into a “damp dungeon in the cellar of the prison, and during the day four colored soldiers were added to our number, making ten in one dungeon measuring about 7 ft. x 11 ft.”216 Food was scant and “the only sanitary accommodations . . . an open bucket in one corner.”217 Conditions worsened after they were moved to an unheated, drafty cell the next [3.80.173.25] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 17:01 GMT) 138 week. Kingston caught a severe cold and cough and lost his appetite . Two weeks later, his health badly deteriorated, he was released on parole and sent north. He eventually returned to his regiment and in June 1865 mustered out as a full surgeon. Dr. Kingston went home to Oswego, New York, and established a medical practice and drugstore. His business was successful despite his personality, which was described as being, at times, odd, peculiar and secretive, especially with regard to financial matters. In 1875, he married Anne Tozer, a “proud and spirited woman”218 sixteen years his junior. After a cerebral hemorrhage ended his life at fifty-three in 1889, leaving her a widow at thirty-seven with two young daughters, she managed the drugstore , enlarged it, and later sold it for a substantial profit. She lived until 1910. ...