Burnside biography

Ambrose Everett Burnside was born May 23, 1824, near Liberty, Indiana, and finished near the middle of his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1847. After serving garrison duty in the Mexican War (1846–1848) and two years on the western frontier, he resigned his commission in 1853, settled in Rhode Island, and was issued a patent for the breech-loading Burnside carbine.

The weapon, however, proved popular only after Burnside had gone bankrupt attempting to manufacture it. While treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad, he worked for McClellan, a friend from West Point.

Burnside began his service in the Civil War as colonel of the 1st Rhode Island Infantry, but after the First Battle of Manassas (1861), he was made a brigadier general.

In charge of what would later become the Army of the Potomac’s Ninth Corps, he battled gale-force winds, seasickness, and knee-deep swamps to seize and occupy Roanoke Island and the North Carolina sounds, victories that helped