Ambrose Burnside

Ambrose Burnside portrait during the Civil War

Library of Congress

On a gray dreary day in February 1862 the bewhiskered Brigadier General Ambrose Everitt Burnside cast his worried eyes across the distant sandy coastline of Roanoke Island. Gunboats lobbed shells at multiple Confederate forts and ships as his infantrymen clambered into large row boats. Like everything else in this campaign, Burnside had planned this attack with meticulous detail. The row boats rowed to a rendezvous with three waiting tugboats. Soon behind each tugboat was twenty rowboats firmly grasping large ropes trailing from the ships’ sterns. As the rowboats took their station with the tugboats, two Union gunboats floated towards the expected landing point at Ashby’s Harbor and began to bombard the shoreline. The worried commander looked at his staff, fear barely making a presence on his large face. Burnside’s fear was more than failure on this battlefield and his campaign, but the country itself. He knew anything short of a complete victory could spell defeat and disintegration for the Union. European powers watched his every move planning their next political step on Burnside’s every move. With a sigh Burnside gave the order, and a pennant flag rose about the flagship. Burnside turned to his staff and calmly muttered, “If I can get 2,000 men ashore, I am all right.” With cheers and scream of whistles the invasion of Roanoke Island and North Carolina began.

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Mary Bishop married Ambrose Burnside in 1852

The Providence Plantations for 250 Years by Welcome Arnold Greene, 1886

Early Life

Ambrose Everitt Burnside, known for his hard-working friendly easy-going nature was an inveterate tinkerer. Born in Liberty, Indiana, in 1824, money was always a struggle for the tall Hoosier. After losing his mother in 1841, Burnside was forced to become a tailor. A keen mind for business aided the youthful Burnside who finished his apprenticeship and became a minor shareholder in the company all in just two years. His recognized intelligence earned him an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1843. Four years later Burnside graduated a respectable 18 out of 37. But Burnside’s military career was lackluster. After graduation he was sent to Veracruz, Mexico, but the career defining action in the Mexican-American War had alread finished. Instead he would be sent into action against Native people in the Southwest. In 1849 Burnside was wounded by an arrow in the neck while fighting Apache people in New Mexico. Burnside’s crowning achievement in the pre-war army was as quartermaster for a survey team on the Mexican border.

 

Life outside the Military

Sent east to recuperate, Burnside was assigned to Fort Adams, Rhode Island. Here he met and married Mary Richmond Bishop in 1852. In the fall of 1853 Burnside resigned his commission in the U.S. Army, remaining in Rhode Island. Because of this prior military experience Burnside was appointed to a command in the Rhode Island militia. An inventor, Burnside created an improved carbine for the U.S. Cavalry, but the contract was rescinded at the last moment and in debt to his creditors, Burnside sold off the rights to his factory and its design. Ironically the “Burnside Carbine” would have thousands sold to the Union army during the Civil War, but not one cent would go to its inventor. The contract he initially received from the government was rescinded and the debt he had gone into to produce the carbines meant he had to sell the patent to cover the losses. Hounded further by creditors Burnside found refuge and a position in the Illinois Central Railroad by his army buddy George B. McClellan. Promotion and prestige soon followed. He eventually was named treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad company and also during his tenure there, he was introduced to the company lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.

Into the Civil War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 the West Point trained Burnside re-enlisted and found himself commanding troops. His first command, a brigade, fought creditably at at Manassas, early in the morning before the rout began. With a limited number of heroes, the Union press lauded Burnside’s efforts, soon promoting the colonel to brigadier general.

 

The Burnside Carbine became the third most popular carbine by the U.S. Army. Over 55,000 were ordered by the U.S. Calvalry.

Smithsonian Institute

 

Burnside’s luck advanced even further as McClellan soon became the Union commander-in-chief. Burnside developed an ambitious plan for a Coastal Division. Recruiting seaman from Eastern Seaboard states to work seamlessly with the U.S. Navy fit perfectly with the Union high commands Anaconda Plan. In the winter of 1861, Burnside was permitted to recruit his seaborne invasion force.

With his usual energy Burnside soon gathered 15,000 soldiers and nearly 60 ships to launch attacks on coastal Confederate states. Included in his Coastal Division was an experimental pontoon bridge system, underwater demolition team as well as a battery of light artillery pieces that could easily be dragged through the mud. Setting out in January 1862 from Annapolis, MD Burnside’s force endured two storms while at sea heading towards Hatteras Island, North Carolina.

 

The capture of Roanoke Island by General Burnside and his army effectively cut off the Confederacy from the Chesapeake Bay. Roanoke Island would remain under Union control for the rest of the war.

Capture of Roanoke Island, Feby. 8th 1862, Library of Congress

Onto to Roanoke Island

Facing no resistance while landing at Hatteras, Burnside's army was able to take control of the inlets surrounding the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina. Burnside knew that the next step of the campaign would be to take the strategically located Roanoke Island. If he could take Roanoke Island and the Albemarle Sound, the U.S. Army would cut the Confederacy off from the Chesapeake Bay. Burnside's capture of Hatteras also brought freedom-seeking enslaved people to Hatteras, some of which came from Roanoke Island. Aided by the formerly enslaved locals (including Thomas R. Robinson), Burnside learned about his enemy’s dispositions and the natural challenges of the area.

Setting sail on February 7, 1862, the Union fleet arrived off Roanoke Island and began landing troops in the evening. By nightfall the Union landed over 3,000 men on the island with the aid of artillery from the Union gunboats. Successive waves of Union reinforcements would bring the remainder of Burnside’s strike force. The next day Burnside ordered his infantry to assault the 2,500 Confederates on the island. Coming to a fort in the center of the island the Union troops spent the morning circling the fort only to become bogged down in Roanoke Island’s swamps. By noon enough Union troops arrived at the fort to overtake the defenses by pure force. With the fort captured the Confederate garrison surrendered and Roanoke Island would not again fall to Confederate hands.

 

The Battle of New Bern was the next major victory for General Burnside after Roanoke Island.

North Carolina State Archives

Capturing the Coast

After regrouping and resting his men on Roanoke Island for a month, Burnside, leaving a small garrison on the island, took to his transports and moved up the Neuse River to New Bern. He took that town on March 13th, driving off its defenders in the swamps to the city’s south. With New Bern captured Burnside pivoted southward along the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad taking the ocean port of Morehead City and Fort Macon on April 26th.

Here the flaw in Burnside’s campaign became apparent. He needed more troops to cover the vast distances of occupied North Carolina. Loyal forces expected to rise and help him were slow in coming, with most of the populous just wanting to be left to their own devices. With little reinforcements, Burnside’s soldiers conducted only light raids into the Confederate interior. By June, Burnside cobbled enough of an army together to develop a new plan to take his limited field force overland to the last North Carolina port city- Wilmington. Capturing Wilmington would effectively block all the Confederates deep-water ports on the east coast. Ship traffic between British and French ships would not be able to deliver goods to the Confederates, cutting them off from essential military supplies and severely hampering their war effort.

 

But the end of Burnside’s Carolina Campaign was not fashioned by the general’s own hands, but by others. Outside of Richmond in the last throes of June 1862 Union General McClellan and his army fought a series of desperate struggles against a revamped Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee. Panicked and believing himself outnumbered by Lee’s smaller force, McClellan retreated under the cover the U.S. Navy’s James River fleet and began calling for immediate reinforcement. Betwixt his own field campaign about to begin and McClellan’s call for aid, Burnside asked Washington DC for instructions. He was told to reinforce McClellan after leaving a small garrison to hold on to the gains of the campaign, Burnside hurried his field army to McClellan’s side. A successful North Carolina campaign closed to support the losing Penninsula Campaign.

 

Big Burnside Battles After North Carolina

Battle of Antietam

Burnside arrived in Virginia and was immediately given command of four different divisions: two from his own North Carolina expedition, one from South Carolina and the last one coming from West Virginia, to form into the IX Corps. The Ninth Corps stormed Fox’s Gap, but at Antietam the corps’ role as diversion was elevated to a major attack in the afternoon and after some impressive successes, it recoiled as it fought the Confederate reinforcements without enough aid from the rest of the Union army. With McClellan’s reluctance to chase the Confederate army after Antietam, Lincoln realized that McClellan had to be replaced. He had approached Burnside two times to take command of the eastern Union army, but each time Burnside refused to replace his superior and friend. Finally, Lincoln convinced Burnside that McClellan would be removed regardless and if Burnside did not take the position, it would be offered to Major General Joseph Hooker, a man Burnside loathed. Reluctantly Burnside accepted the position.

Battle of Fredericksburg

Burnside reorganized his army under three senior officers in three ponderous grand divisions of two corps each.  The large unwieldy units were further slowed by late arriving pontoon bridges which held up his army crossing the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, a small city located between Washington D. C. and Richmond, for three weeks.  Once they arrived Burnside attacked the Confederates at the Battle of Fredericksburg and was bloodily repulsed. Further efforts to move around the entrenched Confederate army failed due to winter rains turning the Virginia roads into a quagmire. Military failure brought recriminations and Burnside was soon ordered to relinquish command of the army (to Hooker of all men) and return to his IX Corps, which was sent west to Ohio. 

  

Knoxville Campaign

Burnside and his IX Corps were shipped to Ohio to launch a campaign into eastern Tennessee. Having removed Confederate forces from Cumberland Gap, Burnside moved his small army into East Tennessee, a hot bed of Unionists since the beginning of the war. Confederate forces from Chattanooga, TN drove him back to Knoxville, TN and attacked the Union army’s entrenchments. At the Battle of Fort Sanders, Confederate forces were bloodily repulsed and forced to withdraw back into Virginia, securing the territory for the Union for the rest of the war. 

Sketch of the Confederate Assult at Fort Sanders, TN

Siege of Petersburg and Battle of the Crater

After a successful campaign in Tennessee, Burnside’s corps was brought east and once again joined the main Union Army of the Potomac. Since Burnside outranked its present commander, Major General George Meade, General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant accompanied the army to moderate any complaints. Halfway through the 1864 Overland Campaign Grant would dissolve the arrangement forcing Burnside to accept commands directly from Meade. In his usual affable manner Burnside accepted the situation without complaint.  Burnside's Corps began assisting the seige of Petersburg settling into the trenches for a long seige to dislodge the Confederate forces.

While concentrated in the trenches before Petersburg, one of Burnside’s regiments (coal miners from Pennsylvania) stated they could dig a mine under the nearby Confederate works and blow them up. Rebuffed by higher command as unfeasible, Burnside scrounged the necessary items to continue the digging. While the work continued Burnside ordered his Fourth Division, his largest and African-American division, to assault the hole in the line. But once Grant and Meade found out and worried about the political fallout of the expected heavy casualties, they had Burnside switch another untrained division in its place on the eve of the mine’s detonation. The Battle of the Crater that day was a disaster resulting in almost 4,000 casualties. Even after the assault faltered Burnside committed his Fourth Division. The heavy casualties for no gain would be the end of Burnside’s military career. He was relieved from command on August 14, 1864. While on "extended leave" the war ended at Appomattox Court House with the surrender of Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses Grant.

The Battle of the Crater sketch

 

After the war Burnside spent his time in Rhode Island, serving at Rhode Island Governor and Senator

"Burnside, Hon. Ambrose of R.I.", Library of Congress

After the War

After resigning on April 15th, 1865, Burnside went back to railroading serving as director and president of the various railroads in the Midwest. He also controlled the Rhode Island Locomotive Works in his adopted state. Entering politics after the war he was elected governor of Rhode Island serving for three years from 1866 to 1869. An active and popular commander in many Civil War veteran organizations, he even served as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the nation’s largest veteran organization at the time. He became the first president of the National Rifle Association in 1871. On a visit to Europe in 1870 he tried to help mediate the Franco-Prussian War. In 1874 the bewhiskered General ran for U.S. Senator for Rhode Island and would serve two terms till his death in 1881. Burnside died of heart attack at home in Bristol, Rhode Island on September 13, 1881.

While the popular legacy of Burnside leans towards his facial hair and away from his military history, without his ingenuity for military invention, the Civil War may well have headed on a different course. The capture of Roanoke Island was a major victory for the Union that helped close the door on European powers supporting the Confederacy and also opened the door to the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island. While his post-North Carolina campaigns are met with defeats more than victories, there are few Union generals who had as great an impact on the outcome of the Civil War than Ambrose Burnside.