Heroes of The Civil War: Everett Ambrose Burnside

Having lived from 1824 to 1881, Burnside was a Union General whose Civil War service took him from the heights of command to a literal trench of disaster. A West Point graduate from Indiana, Burnside invented a breech-loading rifle and left the army in 1854 to try to manufacture it in Rhode Island. The army, however, failed to place orders, and Burnside lost his company to creditors.

Meanwhile he had become active in the Rhode Island militia, and when the war broke out he led a regiment to Washington, one of the first volunteer units to rally around the capital. After leading his brigade at the first battle of Bull Run, Burnside took command of the division from New England, setting out on January 1862. Burnside led them through a series of operations that seized numerous Confederate harbor forts, ships and prisoners.

Commissioned a major general, his reputation high among both his fellow officers and the public, Burnside was asked by Lincoln to command the Army of the Potomac, but he declined on the grounds that he lacked the experience. After the Antietam campaign, in which Burnside still expressed doubts about his abilities, he worked out a plan to take Richmond, the Confederate capital. There was disagreement with Lincoln and his top commander, General Halleck, and Burnside was delayed in crossing the Rappahannock, so that Lee was able to get his forces under Jackson and Longstreet onto the heights of Fredericksburg. When the Federal troops did come to cross, they were confronted by the well-positioned Confederate force and had to retreat back across the river with terrific casualties.

Burnside assumed responsibility and in an extraordinary letter to Lincoln he wrote, ‘It is my belief that I ought to retire to private life.’ Lincoln kept him on, so Burnside decided in January of 1863 to attempt another crossing. When other generals in his command opposed the plan, Burnside wrote an order transferring them and demanded that Lincoln either approve the order or fire him. Lincoln did the latter and fired Burnside.

It was in March that Burnside was reassigned to command the Department of Ohio. Discovering that Union army’s operations were being compromised by Confederate sympathizers, he issued a General Order concluding that ‘the habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will no longer be tolerated.’ It was a controversial order that led to the arrest of the leading Copperhead, Vallandigham and to Burnside’s suppression of the Chicago Times, both actions raising protests from Northerners who felt the military were intruding too far into civilians’ rights.

Burnside took to the field again, and 1863, by capturing and Knoxville, he aided Grant to win at Chattanooga. By 1864, Burnside was in charge of IX Corps and was assigned a principal role in the assault in Petersburg, an important communications center south of Richmond. A tunnel over 500 feet long was dug underground to the Confederate defenses, and then long underground galleries were filled with powder. When this was ignited by a fuse on July 30th, a tremendous explosion killed many Confederate soldiers. Partly due to Burnside’s errors, the subsequent attack by the Federal troops led to their being slaughtered in the crater made by the explosion. Grant later called it ‘a stupendous failure’, and a court of inquiry found Burnside among those responsible. He went on leave and never again would he return to active duty.

After the war, Burnside’s reputation recovered sufficiently for him to be elected governor of Rhode Island and then a US Senator, and except for students of the Civil War, he is now best known for having lent his name to the distinctive side whiskers he wore. So in some way, ‘burnsides’ had been turned into ‘sideburns’.