Black Burns aka Burns

M E Wolf

Colonel
Retired Moderator
Joined
Feb 9, 2008
Location
Virginia
McClellan also had a charger named "Burns," a fiery black, named after an army friend who gave the horse to McClellan. His one failing was that at dinner time he would bolt for his oats regardless of how much depended on McClellan's presence on the battlefield at the critical moment, as in the battle of the Antietam. Running at dinner time became so much an obsession with "Burns" that McClellan was always careful not to be mounted on him at that hour of the day.

April, 1862 (then at the height of his popularity), during a ride from Fort Monroe to Big Bethel, being the first day's march of the Army of the Potomac toward Yorktown, Va. McClellan was on "Black Burns."
 
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