Burnside — his Antecedents, &c.
The Richmond correspondent of the
Grenada Appeal gives the following account of
McClellan's successor:
‘
Gen Ambrose Everett Burnside who supplants the ‘"Young
Napoleon,"’ is one of the most courteous and well-behaving officers of the
Yankee army.
He was born in
Indiana, and entered the Military Academy of
West Point from that State in the year 1843, in the same class with
Ambrose P. Hill and
Henry Heth, who are now
Generals in the
Confederate service.
Having served some years in the artillery after graduation, he resigned his commission and went to live in
Rhode Island, where he had married a woman of wealth and accomplishment.
All his own private resources and the greater part of his wife's fortune were spent by him in preparations for the manufacture on a large scale of a new rifle of his own invention upon which there had been a favorable report from an army commission appointed to examine it, and for which he expected a great contract from the
Secretary of War.
In this he was disappointed.
Gen. Floyd, who was then at the head of the War Department of the
United States, awarded the contract to other parties.
McClellan was at the time, as he now is,
President of the Illinois Central Railway, enjoying a fat salary and wielding a considerable patronage, and he offered
Burnside a clerkship with a salary of two thousand dollars a year, which was accepted.
The two friends were managing the affairs of the railway when the present war broke out, affording to both the chance of military glory, and to
Burnside the hope of bettering his estate.
They both obtained permanent positions, and have since been constantly before the public eye.
Burnside's most intimate personal friends--
Generals Heth,
Maury,
Field, and others — are on the
Southern side fighting the battle of freedom and independence.
On repeated occasions
Burnside is said to have behaved with unexpected courtesy toward the
Confederates, more especially in the
Roanoke Island affair, where the lamented
O. Jennings Wise was killed, and in his bearing toward non-combatant citizens of
Fredericksburg and its neighborhood, one or two of whom he certainly discharged from arrest, though they had been apprehended by special order of
Stanton,
Lincoln's
Secretary of War.
To a gentleman — whose name and county it is not proper to give —
Burnside declared, less than three months ago, that when this war upon the
South became a war for the extermination of slavery he should resign his commission.
The proclamation has been published several weeks, and he has not resigned.
On the contrary, he takes command of the grand army of invasion and comes to incite the slaves to revolt in the spirit of his master.
Doubtless, when
Burnside made that speech about resigning he was sincere, and really meant it; but the temptation of military fame was too strong.
’
The Richmond correspondent of the Charleston
Mercury writes the following incident in his military career:
‘
A friend, who was a merchant in
Washington city at the
first battle of Manassas, and who left the week following, was amusing me the other night with sundry incidents connected with
Washington and that battle, both prior and subsequent to it. Among others he mentioned that this
Gen. Burnside, a short time previous to the battle, passed through the city in command of the, or a, Rhode Island brigade.
On having some encomiums bestowed upon it, he publicly remarked, he ‘"commanded a brigade which could with case march from
Washington to the
Gulf."’ When he left
Washington ‘"he wore a wreath"’ of flowers around one of his arms, and carried an immense bouquet in his hand.
Such was
Gen. Burnside on starting on his first military expedition.
On the day after the battle he returned, looking so haggard that my friend, who saw him, said he looked as if he had been on a ‘"bust"’ for three weeks. Of his entire brigade but little over a hundred could be rallied.
When or where the demoralized mass ever got together I never learned.
’
