Ambrose Everett Burnside

Ambrose Everett Burnside was born May 23, 1824, in Liberty, Indiana. He received a primary school education, apprenticed as a tailor, and later became a partner in a shop in Liberty. In 1843, he was appointed to West Point, graduating in 1847 as a brevet second lieutenant, 2nd Artillery. Burnside served garrison duty in Mexico City during the Mexican War. In 1849, while serving garrison duty on the southwest frontier, he was wounded in a skirmish with Apaches. Resigning his commission in 1853, he spent the next five years manufacturing the breech-load carbine rifles he had invented while in the army. Before the Civil War began, he was appointed as a major general of state militia, was nominated to Congress as a Democrat, and worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. Burnside organized the 1st Rhode Island Infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War and commanded a brigade at the First Manassas. On August 6, 1862, he was promoted to major general of volunteers. Burnside commanded troops at Antietam, but was criticized for ineffectiveness when his delay caused a loss of opportunity for Union troops. In November 1862, Burnside, under his own protests, replaced George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The following month in Fredericksburg, Burnside lost over 12,500 troops and was replaced January 25, 1863, by General Joseph Hooker. Burnside was assigned to command the Department of the Ohio in March 1863. In November, his troops defeated Confederate General James Longstreet at Knoxville. He and his IX Corps participated in the Overland Campaign and the siege of Petersburg with General U. S. Grant. At the battle of Crater in July 1864, a federal mine exploded causing a fifty-yard gap in the Confederate line. Burnside failed to take advantage of the situation, a mistake that would end with his resignation from the service on April 15, 1865. Following the war, he served as director of several railroads and industries. He was elected governor of Rhode Island three times (1866, 1867, 1868), and, in 1874, was elected a United States Senator from Rhode Island. Ambrose Everett Burnside, the man whose unusual facial hair originated the term “sideburns,” and a man whose father had once owned slaves, died while still serving his term as senator in Bristol, Rhode Island on September 13, 1881. He was buried in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.

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