First Bull Run At the outbreak of the Civil War, Burnside was a
colonel in the Rhode Island Militia. He raised the
1st Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and was appointed its colonel on May 2, 1861. Two companies of this regiment were then armed with Burnside carbines. Within a month, he ascended to brigade command in the Department of northeast Virginia. He commanded the brigade without distinction at the
First Battle of Bull Run in July and took over division command temporarily for wounded Brig. Gen.
David Hunter. His 90-day regiment was mustered out of service on August 2; he was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers on August 6 and was assigned to train provisional brigades in the
Army of the Potomac. Burnside was promoted to
major general of volunteers on March 18, 1862, in recognition of his successes at the battles of
Roanoke Island and
New Bern, the first significant Union victories in the
Eastern Theater. In July, his forces were transported north to
Newport News, Virginia, and became the IX Corps of the Army of the Potomac. He refused this opportunity because of his loyalty to McClellan and the fact that he understood his own lack of military experience, and detached part of his corps in support of Maj. Gen.
John Pope's
Army of Virginia in the
Northern Virginia Campaign. He received telegrams at this time from Maj. Gen.
Fitz John Porter which were extremely critical of Pope's abilities as a commander, and he forwarded on to his superiors in concurrence. This episode later played a significant role in
Porter's court-martial, in which Burnside appeared as a witness. Burnside again declined command following Pope's debacle at
Second Bull Run.
Antietam at Antietam in 2023 Burnside was given command of the Right Wing of the Army of the Potomac (the
I Corps and his own IX Corps) at the start of the
Maryland Campaign for the
Battle of South Mountain, but McClellan separated the two corps at the
Battle of Antietam, placing them on opposite ends of the Union battle line and returning Burnside to command of just the IX Corps. Burnside implicitly refused to give up his authority and acted as though the corps commander was first Maj. Gen.
Jesse L. Reno (killed at South Mountain) and then Brig. Gen.
Jacob D. Cox, funneling orders through them to the corps. This cumbersome arrangement contributed to his slowness in attacking and crossing what is now called
Burnside's Bridge on the southern flank of the Union line. Burnside did not perform an adequate reconnaissance of the area, and he did not take advantage of several easy fording sites out of range of the enemy; his troops were forced into repeated assaults across the narrow bridge, which was dominated by Confederate sharpshooters on the high ground. By noon, McClellan was losing patience. He sent a succession of couriers to motivate Burnside to move forward, ordering one aide, "Tell him if it costs 10,000 men he must go now." He further increased the pressure by sending his inspector general to confront Burnside, who reacted indignantly: "McClellan appears to think I am not trying my best to carry this bridge; you are the third or fourth one who has been to me this morning with similar orders." The IX Corps eventually broke through, but the delay allowed Maj. Gen.
A. P. Hill's
Confederate division to come up from
Harpers Ferry and repulse the Union breakthrough. McClellan refused Burnside's requests for reinforcements, and the battle ended in a tactical stalemate.
Fredericksburg After McClellan failed to pursue General
Robert E. Lee's retreat from
Antietam, Lincoln ordered McClellan's removal on November 5, 1862, and selected Burnside to replace him on November 7, 1862. Burnside reluctantly obeyed this order, the third such in his brief career, in part because the courier told him that, if he refused it, the command would go instead to Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside disliked. Burnside assumed charge of the Army of the Potomac in a change of command ceremony at the farm of Julia Claggett in
New Baltimore, Virginia. McClellan visited troops to bid them farewell. Columbia Claggett, Julia Claggett's daughter-in-law, testified after the war that a "parade and transfer of the Army to Gen. Burnside took place on our farm in front of our house in a change of command ceremony at New Baltimore, Virginia, on November 9, 1862." In January 1863, Burnside launched a second offensive against Lee, but it bogged down in winter rains before anything was accomplished, and has derisively been called the
Mud March. In its wake, he asked that several openly insubordinate officers be relieved of duty and
court-martialed; he also offered to resign. Lincoln quickly accepted the latter option, and on January 26 replaced Burnside with Maj. Gen.
Joseph Hooker, one of the officers who had conspired against him.
East Tennessee Burnside offered to resign his commission altogether but Lincoln declined, stating that there could still be a place for him in the army. Thus, he was placed back at the head of the IX Corps and sent to command the Department of the Ohio, encompassing the states of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. This was a quiet area with little activity, and the President reasoned that Burnside could not get himself into too much trouble there. However, antiwar sentiment was riding high in the Western states as they had traditionally carried on a great deal of commerce with the South, and there was little in the way of abolitionist sentiment there or a desire to fight for the purpose of ending slavery. Burnside was thoroughly disturbed by this trend and issued a series of orders forbidding "the expression of public sentiments against the war or the Administration" in his department; this finally climaxed with General Order No. 38, which declared that "any person found guilty of treason will be tried by a military tribunal and either imprisoned or banished to enemy lines". On May 1, 1863, Ohio Congressman
Clement L. Vallandigham, a prominent opponent of the war, held a large public rally in
Mount Vernon, Ohio in which he denounced President Lincoln as a "tyrant" who sought to abolish the Constitution and set up a dictatorship. Burnside had dispatched several agents to the rally who took down notes and brought back their "evidence" to the general, who then declared that it was sufficient grounds to arrest Vallandigham for treason. A military court tried him and found him guilty of violating General Order No. 38, despite his protests that he was expressing his opinions publicly. Vallandigham was sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war and was turned into a martyr by antiwar Democrats. Burnside next turned his attention to Illinois, where the Chicago
Times newspaper had been printing antiwar editorials for months. The general dispatched a squadron of troops to the paper's offices and ordered them to cease printing. Lincoln had not been asked or informed about either Vallandigham's arrest or the closure of the Chicago
Times. He remembered the section of General Order No. 38 which declared that offenders would be banished to enemy lines and finally decided that it was a good idea so Vallandigham was freed from jail and sent to Confederate hands. Meanwhile, Lincoln ordered the Chicago
Times to be reopened and announced that Burnside had exceeded his authority in both cases. The President then issued a warning that generals were not to arrest civilians or close down newspapers again without the White House's permission. Burnside also dealt with Confederate raiders such as
John Hunt Morgan. In the
Knoxville Campaign, Burnside advanced to
Knoxville, Tennessee, first bypassing the Confederate-held Cumberland Gap and ultimately occupying Knoxville unopposed; he then sent troops back to the Cumberland Gap. Confederate commander Brig. Gen.
John W. Frazer refused to surrender in the face of two Union brigades but Burnside arrived with a third, forcing the surrender of Frazer and 2,300 Confederates. Union Maj. Gen.
William S. Rosecrans was defeated at the
Battle of Chickamauga, and Burnside was pursued by
Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, against whose troops he had battled at Marye's Heights. Burnside skillfully outmaneuvered Longstreet at the
Battle of Campbell's Station and was able to reach his entrenchments and safety in Knoxville, where he was briefly besieged until the Confederate defeat at the
Battle of Fort Sanders outside the city. Tying down Longstreet's corps at Knoxville contributed to Gen. Braxton Bragg's defeat by Maj. Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant at
Chattanooga. Troops under Maj. Gen.
William T. Sherman marched to Burnside's aid, but the siege had already been lifted; Longstreet withdrew, eventually returning to Virginia. The IX Corps fought in the
Overland Campaign of May 1864 as an independent command, reporting initially to Grant; his corps was not assigned to the Army of the Potomac because Burnside outranked its commander Maj. Gen.
George G. Meade, who had been a division commander under Burnside at Fredericksburg. This cumbersome arrangement was rectified on May 24 just before the
Battle of North Anna, when Burnside agreed to waive his precedence of rank and was placed under Meade's direct command. Burnside fought at the battles of
Wilderness and
Spotsylvania Court House, where he did not perform in a distinguished manner, attacking piecemeal and appearing reluctant to commit his troops to the costly frontal assaults that characterized these battles. After North Anna and
Cold Harbor, he took his place in the
siege lines at Petersburg.
The Crater As the two armies faced the stalemate of
trench warfare at Petersburg in July 1864, Burnside agreed to a plan suggested by a regiment of former coal miners in his corps, the 48th Pennsylvania: to dig a mine under a fort named Elliot's Salient in the Confederate entrenchments and ignite explosives there to achieve a surprise breakthrough. The fort was destroyed on July 30 in what is known as the
Battle of the Crater. Because of interference from Meade, Burnside was ordered, only hours before the infantry attack, not to use his division of
black troops, which had been specially trained for the assault: instead, he was forced to use untrained white troops. He could not decide which division to choose as a replacement, so he had his three subordinate commanders draw lots. The division chosen by chance was that commanded by Brig. Gen.
James H. Ledlie, who had failed to brief the men on what was expected of them, and was observed to be drinking liquor with Brig. Gen Edward Ferrero in a bombproof shelter well behind the lines during the battle, providing no leadership at all. As a result, Ledlie's men entered the huge crater instead of going around it, became trapped, and were subjected to heavy fire from Confederates around the rim, resulting in high casualties. in the end his forces suffered 3,800 casualties As a result of the Crater fiasco, Burnside was relieved of command on August 14 and sent on "extended leave" by Grant. He was never recalled to duty for the remainder of the war. A court of inquiry later placed the blame for the defeat on Burnside, Ledlie and Ferrero. In December, Burnside met with President Lincoln and General Grant about his future. He was contemplating resignation, but Lincoln and Grant requested that he remain in the Army. At the end of the interview, Burnside wrote, "I was not informed of any duty upon which I am to be placed." He finally resigned his commission on April 15, 1865, after Lee's surrender at
Appomattox. The
United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War later exonerated Burnside and placed the blame for the Union defeat at the Crater on General Meade for requiring the specially trained USCT (United States Colored Troops) men to be withdrawn. ==Postbellum career==