Roy Morris Jr.
Nothing in Ambrose Burnside’s pre-Civil
War career indicated that he would be any-
thing but a successful and energetic general.
A graduate of the United States Military
Academy at West Point, Class of 1847, he
had served in the Mexican War and on the
southwestern frontier, being wounded dur-
ing a skirmish with Apaches. He was well
liked and well considered by his superiors.
The first hint of trouble came after Burn-
side resigned his commission in 1853 to
open a munitions factory in his native state
of Rhode Island. He intended to manufac-
ture a new breech-loading carbine he had
personally designed. The Burnside carbine
was a short rifle with no fore stock that
fired a .54-caliber metallic cartridge—the
first American firearm to use such a round.
The success of Burnside’s Bristol-based
enterprise depended entirely on receiving a
government contract. But despite produc-
ing and selling 200 of the weapons to the
Army, he failed to secure the expected con-
tract. As a consequence, he was forced into
bankruptcy, with creditors assuming con-
trol of the carbine’s patent. Eventually,
some 55,000 Burnside carbines were sold
to the government, along with millions of
rounds of metallic ammunition. Burnside
did not receive a penny of the profits.
When the Civil War began, Burnside,
then a major general in the Rhode Island
Militia, was named a colonel of the 1st
Rhode Island Volunteers, a 90-day regi-ment he had helped organize.
Rushing to the nation’s capital,
he fought competently at the
First Battle of Bull Run and was
promoted to brigadier general.
In the spring of 1862, Burnside
led an expedition down the coast
of North Carolina, capturing
Roanoke Island, New Bern,
Beaufort, and Fort Macon,
despite being threatened with mutiny sev-
eral times by the men in his combined
Army-Navy invasion force and almost
drowning off the coast of Cape Hatteras.
At the Battle of Antietam, Burnside
needlessly delayed his arrival on the bat-
tlefield by fretting over the construction of
a stone bridge across Antietam Creek. The
picayune bridge-building prevented his
friend McClellan from crushing Robert E.
Lee’s Confederates and perhaps winning
the war outright. Adding insult to injury,
the bridge proved entirely unnecessary—
the water in the creek was only knee deep.
Twice Lincoln offered Burnside com-
mand of the Army of the Potomac, and
twice Burnside turned him down. Lincoln’s
offers were both personal and political. He
genuinely seemed to like Burnside, and he
also wanted to soften the blow of remov-
ing the popular McClellan by replacing
him with his best friend.
Finally, in November 1862, Burnside
accepted the president’s offer and beganmaking plans to attack Lee at
Fredericksburg, Virginia. His
plan depended heavily on sur-
prise, but Lee was waiting for
Burnside with his full army on
Marye’s Heights when the
Union attackers swarmed
through the city on December- Wave after wave of Union
attackers rushed the entrenched
Confederate position, only to be decimated
by massive rifle and artillery fire. Burnside
muttered in anguish, “Oh, those men, those
men.” More than 12,000 casualties were
inflicted by Lee’s soldiers, at a cost of less
than half that number.
Following an ill-fated flank march that
became infamous as “Burnside’s Mud
March,” Burnside was mercifully removed
from command and transferred west to the
Department of the Ohio. He returned in
time to lead the IX Corps in the various
battles of Ulysses S. Grant’s Wilderness
campaign before coming to grief in the
rubble of the Crater.
Grant pronounced a harsh, if fair, judg-
ment of Burnside’s career: “An officer who
was generally liked and respected, he was
not fitted to command an army. No one
knew that better than himself.” Burnside
had tried twice to tell Lincoln that very
thing. It was too bad for everyone involved
that the president had failed to believe him.
Roy Morris Jr.
Editorial
Carl A. Gnam, Jr.
Editorial Director, Founder
Roy Morris Jr.
Editor
Samantha DeTulleo
Art Director
Kevin M. Hymel
Research DirectorVolume 3 Number 1
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