Ambrose Burnside

Ambrose Burnside was a Union general in the American Civil War who also served as governor and United States senator from Rhode Island. He had earlier worked as an inventor and arms manufacturer, and his distinctive facial hair gave the English language the word “sideburns”.

Burnside commanded the Army of the Potomac during the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 and later led the Army of the Ohio. His military reputation was mixed, but he remained prominent in public life after the war and became the first president of the National Rifle Association.

In William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich’s To Make Men Free, General Ambrose Burnside, a hard-luck commander, is one of the few generals eager to bring a USCT division into his ranks. Hourly History’s Battle of Antietam follows Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North, George B. McClellan’s response and the combat around the Cornfield, Sunken Road and Burnside Bridge. Ambrose Burnside is treated fictionally in William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich’s The Battle of the Crater and Bernard Cornwell’s The Bloody Ground.