Burnside - anything good?

[MikeyB]

History will remember him mostly for Fredericksburg and he has other negatives associated to his name like the crater. But he hung around until 1864, so someone either really liked him or he was competent/performing decent service.

Did he have any successes? Knoxville? What are some of the good things this guy did that get buried because history remembers only Fredericksburg? Is he properly judged by history or is there a lot of good that we never hear about?

 

[nc native]

Besides Knoxville, Burnside performed well during the coastal campaign in Eastern North Carolina during the first half of 1862 albeit against weak and disorganized opposition. From most accounts, Burnside had a pleasant personality and worked well with other people which might explain his longevity as a general despite some of his not too stellar moments on the battlefield.

 

[rpkennedy]

History will remember him mostly for Fredericksburg and he has other negatives associated to his name like the crater. But he hung around until 1864, so someone either really liked him or he was competent/performing decent service.

Did he have any successes? Knoxville? What are some of the good things this guy did that get buried because history remembers only Fredericksburg? Is he properly judged by history or is there a lot of good that we never hear about?

His coastal expedition in 1862 was pretty well-regarded. And he did fairly well in the Western Theater (culminating in the Knoxville Campaign).

In the end, he was a decent corps commander with a pretty good independent command record but kind of fizzled out as 1864 wore on (although the quality of his subordinates left something to be desired as well and it didn't help that the best of the lot kept getting killed like Stevens, Reno, Rodman, and Stevenson).

Ryan

 

[MikeyB]

His coastal expedition in 1862 was pretty well-regarded. And he did fairly well in the Western Theater (culminating in the Knoxville Campaign).

In the end, he was a decent corps commander with a pretty good independent command record but kind of fizzled out as 1864 wore on (although the quality of his subordinates left something to be desired as well and it didn't help that the best of the lot kept getting killed like Stevens, Reno, Rodman, and Stevenson).

Ryan

was a big part of the fizzling the discord w/ Meade over seniority and the independent IX corp status? grant could have handled this better?

 

[J. Stanley]

By all means, Burnside was an honest, modest and affable guy that everyone enjoyed being friends with. Mind you, people definitely doubted his ability at command. When he returned to the Army of the Potomac for the Overland Campaign, everybody had something to say. "He won't be up - I know him well," cautioned James C. Duane, the Army of the Potomac's chief engineer, on the march to the Wilderness. And indeed, on the morning of May 6, Burnside did not show on time. "I knew it!" exclaimed an exasperated Hancock, who sorely needed him at that moment. "Just what I expected!" According to Theodore Lyman, Burnside possessed "a genius for slowness."

Putting his failures aside, there's the aforementioned North Carolina Campaign in 1862, where he genuinely did a good job. Burnside was also a fairly good gunsmith it seems. His Burnside carbine did good work and was popular among cavalrymen.

 

[TnFed]

Immensely popular with East TN. Unionist. They didn't consider him pretentious as they did most northern commanders.

 

[NFB22]

I think Burnside was very capable when limited to the command size of a Corps or probably would have been ideal as a division commander. North Carolina was probably his crowning achievement.

 

[7thWisconsin]

Ambrose Burnside went from corps command to governor of Rhode Island pretty quickly (1866-1869). The people who voted for him would have remembered his Civil War record and did not feel it to be a fatal impediment to his political career. I think Old Burn was promoted above his ability. He was well-liked, and his soldiers liked him (chich is ironic considering how many of them he got killed.)

 

[NFB22]

Ambrose Burnside went from corps command to governor of Rhode Island pretty quickly (1866-1869). The people who voted for him would have remembered his Civil War record and did not feel it to be a fatal impediment to his political career. I think Old Burn was promoted above his ability. He was well-liked, and his soldiers liked him (chich is ironic considering how many of them he got killed.)

Just a copy and paste from something I previously said about Burnside in a another thread here but I agree with you:

I've always held him in some regard because he wasn't shy about the fact he was not qualified to command large bodies of troops. I also believe that because he was so popular, that he didn't have the type of qualities needed by an officer in charge of say, the Army of the Potomac. When you recognize the fact that you're not qualified for the job and have openly voiced it, how do you go about commanding others, who were recently your peers??

At the end of the day, I think Lincoln is somewhat to blame for what Burnside did at Fredericksburg. When an officer has rejected the idea of command, multiple times, do you really expect good results when you basically force him to take command?

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

was a big part of the fizzling the discord w/ Meade over seniority and the independent IX corp status?

Not at all. Burnside reported to Grant solely because of his seniority, but when Grant found this arrangement ineffective he asked Burnside to waive his seniority and serve directly under Meade. Burnside was quite willing to do so when asked. He probably understood the need, but more importantly didn't have the massive ego some of his peers did.

 

[on again]

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[TnFed]

Not at all. Burnside reported to Grant solely because of his seniority, but when Grant found this arrangement ineffective he asked Burnside to waive his seniority and serve directly under Meade. Burnside was quite willing to do so when asked. He probably understood the need, but more importantly didn't have the massive ego some of his peers did.

Nope, he definitely didn't have a massive ego. When he caught the Confederate spy Lottie Moon and her family. He didn't put them in prison or have them hanged, just sent back to Oxford Ohio...where Lottie Moon had tilted him ar the altar years before. A lot of men
..Union or Confederate...might not be as forgiving.

 

[gary]

Competent as a corps commander and out of his league as an army commander.

At Marye's Heights his diversionary attack became a fixation. The original plan was for the diversionary attack to pin part of Lee's Army while the breakthrough would be to the south. Before that at Antietam Sharpsburg he became fixed on the Rohrbach Bridge and failed to explore a ford a few miles down that would have allowed him to flank the Confederates. Myopic in both cases and lacked fingerspitzengefuhl that would have given him the flexibility to find other alternatives. Putting the drunk Ledlie in command of the attack on the crater was also a mistake. At least the USCT were trained to go around the crater (but in the battle they plunged right in).

Still, his performance in North Carolina was very credible as was his defense of Knoxville.