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Article Excerpt
Americans love conspiracy theories. Whether the subject is the assassination of a president, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the nation into World War II, or the tragedy of September 11, considerable segments of the American public have exhibited a remarkable openness to unconventional explanations for historical events that have an element of darkness and mystery about them. No doubt this can in part be attributed to the much-chronicled spirit of paranoia that surrounded the American Revolutionary experience. During that time, a belief that the experiment in virtuous republican government existed in an atmosphere where hostile internal and external forces were constantly seeking its overthrow became a central organizing feature of American political culture. Before the Civil War, this was manifest in, among other things, accusations by Hamiltonian Federalists that Jeffersonian Republicans were agents of French Jacobinism, Jacksonian Democrats' cries that the Bank of the United States was the agent of a "money power" that sought to enslave the people, and, of course, charges by Republicans during the 1850s that the Slave Power was actively conspiring to transform the republic into a slave empire.
Whatever the cause, the American love of conspiracy has clearly affected the writing of Civil War military history. Indeed, given the fact that the war revolved around questions of loyalty to one's cause, it would be surprising if this were not the case. And to be sure, there were plenty of instances of conspiratorial activity within Civil War high commands. One need only look to the trials and tribulations Braxton Bragg endured in dealing with the subordinate commanders fate had placed under him in the Army of Tennessee, the machinations of John A. McClernand in 1862 to supplant Ulysses S. Grant as commander of the effort to capture Vicksburg, or the undermining of Ambrose Burnside by subordinates in the Army of the Potomac after Fredericksburg to find evidence of high command intrigue during the Civil War. (1)
One conspiracy theory that has gained popularity among students of the Civil War involves the Union high command during the 1862 Maryland campaign. The victim in this case was Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, the man who commanded first a wing, then only the Ninth Corps, in the Army of the Potomac during operations in the Old Line State during the fall of 1862. The perpetrators of the conspiracy included malevolent spirits that took the forms of Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter and Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, but at its center was Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. The first kernels of this theory appeared in the postwar writings of Burnside's principle subordinate at Antietam, Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, and, as with nearly all topics related to the Maryland campaign, was most fully developed by Antietam Battlefield Board member and battle veteran Ezra Carmen in his massive unpublished study of the campaign. (2) Its enduring influence is evident in recent discussions of the Union high command during the Maryland campaign in the works of such distinguished scholars such as Stephen W. Sears, James M. McPherson, and William Marvel. (3)
According to this theory, the Union failed to achieve more during the Maryland campaign in part because Burnside had the misfortune, through no fault of his own, of earning the jealousy of McClellan and wrath of Porter at the outset of the campaign, while at the same time finding himself in one of the most dangerous spots in the Union army--namely, between the notoriously hyper-ambitious Hooker and the personal and professional advancement Hooker believed his due. McClellan, Porter, and Hooker's resentments resulted, so the theory goes, in Burnside's sudden and senseless demotion from commander of a two-corps wing to a single corps in the aftermath of the September 14, 1862, Battle of South Mountain. Then, McClellan inexplicably saw to it that the corps belonging to Hooker which had previously been part of Burnside's wing was sent to the opposite end of the battlefield to fight a completely separate battle at Antietam. As a consequence, Burnside spent September 15-17 in a funk, which contributed to the Ninth Corps's problematic efforts to get across the feeble obstacle posed by Antietam Creek on the seventeenth. This proved costly to the Union cause, for it allowed Maj. Gen. Ambrose P. Hill's division to reach the battlefield just in time to save the Army of Northern Virginia from complete destruction.
Yet, a close reexamination of the Maryland campaign and the Battle of Antietam offers little support for this conspiracy theory. It reveals that the assignment of command responsibilities and tasks at Antietam was dictated not by personality but by practical operational and tactical considerations. Moreover, a close and balanced examination of all of the actors in this drama, from the supposed conspirators to the presumed victim, offers little to suggest than any of them acted in anything other than good faith throughout the campaign and much to indicate that the decisions they made during the campaign and battle are explicable--and justifiable--based on what they knew of the situations they faced. In short, however much it may add to the human story of Antietam, the weakness of the foundations for the Burnside conspiracy theory at Antietam necessitates its being placed on the list of Civil War conspiracy theories that it is long past time for historians to put to rest.
The relationship between McClellan and Burnside was by all accounts a warm and close one when the Civil War began, even though on the surface they seemed an unlikely pair. (4) McClellan grew up in an accomplished and prominent Philadelphia family that rubbed elbows with some of the most distinguished men in America, while Burnside spent his early life in relative obscurity in small-town Indiana. From the outset, McClellan received every opportunity to excel, and he made the most of them. His energy and intellect enabled him to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania at the age of thirteen and led the authorities at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to grant a special dispensation to allow him to enter the academy two years before he had reached the minimum age requirement. For his part, Burnside received a decent education as a youth but seemed destined for a humble fate upon completion of his studies. With no other apparent opportunities, nineteen-year-old Burnside was apprenticed out to be a tailor and had just opened a shop when his father managed to secure him an appointment to West Point in 1843. At the military academy, McClellan emerged as the unquestioned academic and military star of the class of 1846. Burnside's academic performance was generally mediocre, and he earned a reputation as one of the great mischief-makers of the class of 1847. McClellan followed up West Point with a distinguished performance in the Mexican War and subsequently enjoyed a series of uncharacteristically challenging and rewarding assignments. For his part, Burnside graduated too late to see combat in Mexico and did little to really distinguish himself as an officer in the decade that followed his graduation from West Point.
Despite their disparate experiences, at some point during their service in the army McClellan and Burnside developed a warm personal relationship. This was to Burnside's great good fortune, for when his attempt to manufacture a carbine of his own design after leaving the army failed, McClellan came to the rescue. He used his position as vice president with the Illinois Central Railroad to secure his friend a job and invited Burnside and his wife to share his spacious Chicago home. Their relationship blossomed, with McClellan writing to his fiance at one point: "Honest, true, brave old Burnside is worth a legion.... Of all men I have ever known I believe I value his friendship and respect the most and am proud indeed to know that I possess both.... Would that I were more like him! If ever a man went to heaven he will surely go there." (5)
When the Civil War began, "Mac" and "Burn" (as they affectionately referred to each other) returned to the army and experienced meteoric rises to prominence. When he arrived in Washington at the head of Rhode Island's first contingent of ninety-day troops in early 1861, the conspicuously handsome and gregarious Burnside favorably impressed the nation's political and military leaders. Few were more taken with him than President Abraham Lincoln, who took a particularly shine to the impressive colonel from Rhode Island, who then turned in a solid performance as a brigade commander during the ill-fated First Manassas campaign. No one was more delighted than Burnside when McClellan arrived in Washington, fresh off a series of minor, but well-publicized victories in western Virginia, to take command of the troops around the capital after First Manassas. And as he built the Army of the Potomac, few officers were closer to or more trusted by McClellan than Burnside. When McClellan, newly installed as commanding general of all the Union armies, decided in November 1861 to organize an independent force in New England for operations along the Confederate coast, he did not hesitate to select Burnside for the command. (6)
Then came 1862. While McClellan began coming under attack early in the year for the inactivity of the Army of the Potomac, Burnside won laurels in a successful campaign along the North Carolina coast. Then, when McClellan encountered difficulties in his campaign against Richmond on the York-James Peninsula in June, the Lincoln administration ordered Burnside's force to Virginia. After a few weeks at Fort Monroe expecting to join McClellan's army near Richmond, Burnside and his command, designated the Ninth Corps, were instead ordered to Aquia Creek to support Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia. They were followed shortly thereafter by McClellan's army, with McClellan fuming about the decision to evacuate the peninsula and send Burnside's corps and the Army of the Potomac to Pope. After Pope's defeat at Second Manassas, President Lincoln again, but not without sounding out Burnside for the second time in less than a month for the position and being flatly turned down, placed McClellan in charge of the Army of the Potomac. (7)
In these events, the first seeds of the Antietam conspiracy were supposedly sown. McClellan learned immediately from Burnside himself of Lincoln's effort to place Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac after the Seven Days Battles, and of his second attempt after Second Manassas. In both instances, Burnside told Lincoln that he believed only McClellan was capable of providing the army with the leadership it needed. Although McClellan expressed appreciation for his friend's actions in letters to his wife, it is argued that Lincoln's actions sparked the young general's jealousy and inspired him to undermine his old friend when the Army of the Potomac left the Washington defenses to counter the rebel invasion of Maryland. "The offer of command of the army to Burnside," Jacob Cox later wrote, "though refused, was a sufficiently plain designation of McClellan's successor.... It needed a more magnanimous nature than McClellan's proved to be, to bear the obligation of Burnside's powerful friendship in securing for him again the field command of the army." (8)
The Burnside "problem" was one of many McClellan had to deal with when he assumed direction of the defenses of Washington after Second Manassas. Nonetheless, in an amazing display of personal leadership, by the end of the first week of September he had the units from Pope's old army and the Army of the Potomac ready to go after Lee. For the march into Maryland, McClellan informally organized the approximately seventy-five thousand men (of whom nearly thirty thousand were new recruits) he initially had under his direction into three wings. A cavalry division commanded by Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton would screen the advance into Maryland, while in the center wing Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner led his Second and Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams's Twelfth Corps, as well as a division from Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter's Fifth Corps. On the left, Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin commanded a wing composed of his Sixth Corps and a division from the Fourth Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. Darius N. Couch. (9)
On the right, Burnside, like Sumner, would direct two corps. The first of these had initially been organized as the First Corps, Army of the Potomac, in April 1862, but had been...
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