:-NRLF 
 
University of California 
 
JIVEES 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 AMBROSE E. BURNSLDE, 
 
 (A SENATOR FROM RHODE ISLAND), 
 
 DELIVERED IN TIIK 
 
 SENATE AND HOUSE OF BEPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 % FORTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION, 
 U 
 
 JANTJABY 23, 1882, 
 
 THE PROCEEDINGS CONNECTED WITH THE 
 FUNERAL OF THE DECEASED. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 
 188-2. 
 
JOINT EESOLTJTION to print certain eulogies delivered in Congress upon the late Fer 
 nando Wood, Matt. H. Carpenter, and Ambrose E. Burnside. 
 
 Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
 America in Congress assembled, That there be printed twelve thousand copies 
 respectively of the eulogies delivered in Congress upon the late Fernando 
 Wood, a Representative from the State of New York ; Matt. H. Carpenter, a 
 Senator from the State of Wisconsin, and Ambrose E. Burnside, a Senator 
 from the State of Ehode Island, of each of which four thousand shall be for 
 the Senate and eight thousand for the use of the House of Representatives ; 
 and the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to have 
 printed portraits of the three above named Messrs. Wood, Carpenter, and 
 Burnside to accompany their respective eulogies; and for the purpose ..of 
 defraying the expense of engraving and printing the said portraits the sum 
 of fifteen hundred dollars, or so much thereof as may be necessary, be, and 
 the same is hereby, appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not other 
 wise appropriated. 
 
 Approved February 15, 1882. 
 2 
 
ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 DEATH OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, 
 
 A SENATOR FROM RHODE ISLAND. 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 Wednesday, October 12, 1881. 
 
 Rev. J. J. BULLOCK, D. D., Chaplain to the Senate, offered the 
 following 
 
 PKAYER. 
 
 Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, in obedience to the call of 
 the President of the United States, we have met together this day. 
 We meet under circumstances of the greatest solemnity, for since 
 our last meeting it has seemed good unto Thee in Thine inscrutable 
 wisdom to permit the messenger of death to remove from this world 
 by the hand of violence the distinguished head of this nation. 
 
 We mourn also the death of a Senator greatly beloved and hon 
 ored ; and the respected Secretary, and other officers of this body. 
 We would bow submissively to Thy will, beseeching Thee to sanc 
 tify to us these solemn events. Deeply impress upon our minds a 
 sense of our mortality, of the shortness and uncertainty of life ; and 
 may we so live as ever to be ready for our departure when it shall 
 be Thy will to call us hence. 
 
4 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 We pray for the bereaved family of the deceased President of 
 these United States. Sustain and comfort them in the time of their 
 severe affliction. 
 
 Most Gracious God, we offer up our sincere and earnest prayers 
 for Thy servant who has been called in Thy providence to succeed 
 to the Chief Magistracy of this great people. May he be plente- 
 ously endued with heavenly grace and wisdom to aid him in the 
 discharge of the high trust which has been committed to his hands. 
 Make him a blessing to the whole country and to the world. 
 
 And now, our Heavenly Father, we invoke thine especial bless 
 ing upon the Senate now assembled. Preside over their delibera 
 tions, guide their councils, and lead them to such action as shall 
 redound to Thy glory and to the best interests of our common 
 country. 
 
 Most Merciful God, we implore Thy grace and the forgiveness 
 of all our sins. These and all other blessings we ask in the name 
 o f Christ, our Divine Redeemer. Amen. 
 
 Mr. ANTHONY. Mr. President, I rise to perform a most 
 mournful duty. I present certain resolutions passed by the city 
 council of the city of Providence upon the death of my late col 
 league, AMBROSE EVERETT BURNSIDE. Contrary to my usual 
 custom, I ask that they be read and that they be entered at length 
 on the Journal. 
 
 The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The resolutions will be read at 
 the desk. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read as follows : 
 
 TKE CITY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 Joint resolutions of the city council. 
 
 Whereas General AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, United States Senator for the 
 State of Rhode Island, died September 13, 1881 ; and 
 Whereas his remains are to lie in state in the city hall in the city of Provi- 
 
PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE. 5 
 
 dence until the day of his funeral on Friday, September 16, 1881, at twelve 
 o clock noon : Therefore, 
 
 Resolved, That we, the city council of said city of Providence, representing 
 the feelings of sorrow which our citizens share alike in the death of a brave 
 and distinguished soldier, a high-minded legislator and citizen, do hereby 
 recognize the great loss sustained by the nation, the State, and the city. 
 
 Resolved, That, as a mark of respect to the memory of the deceased soldier 
 and statesman, the city hall be closed to the transaction of publio business 
 from eleven o clock a. m. on Thursday, September 15, 1881, to the Saturday 
 following, at nine o clock a. m., and that the city council attend his funeral 
 in a body. 
 
 Resolved, That the city clerk be hereby directed to transmit copies of the 
 aforegoing to the family of General BUKXSIDE and to the United States 
 Senate. 
 
 Passed in common council, September 14, 1881 ; in board of aldermen same 
 day. 
 
 Approved September 14, 1881. 
 
 WILLIAM S, HAYWARD, Mayor. 
 
 A true copy of record. 
 
 Attest: HENRY V. A. JOSLIN, City Clerk. 
 
 Mr. ANTHONY. Mr. President, the sad event which these reso 
 lutions deplore occurred at the country house of General BURN- 
 SIDE, near Bristol, on the morning of the 13th of September, by a 
 disease so insidious and so rapid, that it did not assume a threaten 
 ing aspect until within an hour of its fatal termination. 
 
 This sudden and unexpected bereavement threw the State into 
 mourning. Every man in it felt that he had lost a friend, a brother, 
 a father, or a son. The Governor, responsive to the general desire, 
 ordered to his memory the honor of a public funeral, and charged 
 himself with the execution of the order. It was one of the most 
 imposing and wonderful demonstrations of public respect and popu 
 lar affection ever witnessed in the State. The officials and the chief 
 dignitaries of the State participated in the solemn ceremonies. Dis 
 tinguished personages from without the State, including members of 
 both Houses of Congress, some from far distances, and at great per 
 sonal inconvenience, attended to pay the last tribute of respect to 
 Rhode Island s dead Senator. 
 
 The melancholy procession wound its slow way through streets 
 
6 LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF AMBROSE E. BUENSIDE. 
 
 lined with a sorrowing population and somber with the draperies 
 of woe. Loving hands laid his form by the side of the bride of 
 his youth; his old companions in arms discharged their farewell 
 volleys over his grave. 
 
 Already measures have been inaugurated for the erection of a 
 statue which shall attest to coming generations how dear he was to 
 the people whom he served so well and so faithfully. 
 
 Such honors Ilion to her hero paid, 
 
 And peaceful slept the mighty Hector s shade. 
 
 At a future time, Mr. President, when the other House of Con 
 gress shall i>e in session, to respond to the action of this, my col 
 league and myself will ask the suspension of public business, that 
 the Senate may pay fitting tribute to the character, the virtues, and 
 the services of General BUENSIDE. 
 
 I move, as a mark of respect to his memory, that the Senate do 
 now adjourn. 
 
 The motion was agreed to ; and (at twelve o clock and forty- 
 three minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned. 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 DEATH OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, 
 
 A SENATOR FROM RIIODE ISLAND. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE SENATE, 
 
 Monday, January 23, 1882. 
 
 Mr. ANTHONY. Pursuant to notice given last week, I submit 
 the resolutions that I hold in my hand, and I ask that the Senate 
 proceed to their present consideration. 
 
 The PEESIDENT pro tempore. The resolutions submitted by the 
 Senator from Rhode Island will be read. 
 
 The Acting Secretary read the resolutions, as follows : 
 
 Resolved, That from au earnest desire to show every mark of respect to the 
 memory of Hon. AMBKOSE E. BURNSIDE, late a Senator of the United States 
 from the State of Rhode Island, and to manifest the high estimate entertained 
 of his eminent public services aud his distinguished patriotism, the business 
 of the Senate be now suspended that his friends and associates may pay fitting 
 tribute to his public and private virtues. 
 
 Resolved, That a widespread and public sorrow on the announcement of his 
 death attested the profound sense of the loss which the whole country has 
 sustained. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions 
 to the House of Representatives. 
 
 Resolved, That as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the Sena 
 tor the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 7 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. ANTHONY, of Rhode Island. 
 
 No bugle must sound, 
 
 Ye bright waving banners, stoop low! 
 Let your lances with Cyprus be bound, 
 
 Let the drums be all silent in woe. 
 
 Mr. PEESIDENT : I have risen to perform the very saddest office 
 that has fallen to me in all my public service. 
 
 The sudden death of General BURNSIDE, in the full vigor and 
 strength of his manhood, sent, through the State of Rhode Island, 
 a shock that was echoed back, in messages of sympathy and condo 
 lence, from every part of the country and from foreign lands. The 
 nation, which was watching, in alternate hope and fear, the ebbing 
 life of its elected chief, turned, for a moment, from the bedside of 
 the dying Garfield, to lament the dead BURNSIDE. In this body, 
 the death of no one among us could have moved the Senate to a pro- 
 founder sense of sorrow. His bier has been moistened by the tears 
 of a State; his tomb is garlanded by the admiration of a nation. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter upon a sketch of the life of General 
 BURNSIDE; scarcely even of his character. The most important 
 part of that life was passed in the service of his country, and his 
 deeds are a part of his country s history ; and so long as New Berne 
 and Roanoke Island, and South Mountain, and Antietam and 
 Knoxville are remembered, his services and his fame will not be 
 forgotten. 
 
 General BURNSIDE was born at Liberty, Union County, Indiana, 
 May 23, 1824. His family was of Scotch descent. His great 
 grandfather, Robert Burnside, with two brothers, had espoused the 
 cause of Charles Edward, and after the triumph of the British 
 arms, and the overthrow of the Pretender, at Culloden, sought an 
 asylum in South Carolina, The General s grandfather, James 
 Burnside, married a daughter of James Edghill, an Englishman 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 9 
 
 by birth. His son, the father of the General, bore his mother s 
 paternal name, Edghill Burnside. He was born in South Carolina, 
 but removed to the Territory of Indiana. He appears to have 
 sympathized with the conscientious repugnance to slavery, which, 
 even at that early day, had been aroused in the Carolinas, for he 
 freed his slaves, and accompanied the "Quaker Emigration" to the 
 West, which was dedicated to freedom, by the ordinance of 1787. 
 In his new home he maintained a character of high respectability 
 and influence; was for a long time clerk of the county court, an 
 associate justice of the same, and a senator in the legislature of the 
 State. Ambrose was his youngest son. He gave him a good 
 English education, in the schools of the neighborhood; and in 
 1843 he entered, as a cadet, at West Point. At the Academy he 
 was not a hard student. With exuberant animal spirits, of vigor 
 ous bodily strength, he became expert in military and athletic 
 exercises, while his aptitude in mathematics, then, as now, ranking 
 high in the curriculum of studies, compensated for his deficiency of 
 literary application, and gave him an excellent average standing; 
 and he graduated at eighteen, in a class of thirty-eight. 
 
 Among his classmates and fellow-students were many who sub 
 sequently rose to distinction, on one side or the other, in the late 
 unhappy war. Of his own class were Generals Wilcox, Fry, 
 Gibson, Long, Griffin, Viele, and Hunt on the Union side, and 
 A. P. Hill and Heth on the otlier. This class furnished twenty- 
 eight officers who adhered to the flag, and four who took up arms 
 against it. Six had previously died or resigned. Among his 
 fellow-students were Generals McClellan, Hancock, Pleasanton, 
 Fitz-John Porter, Gilmore, Parke, Reno, Foster, William F. Smith, 
 C. P. Stone, Hatch, Sackett, Granger, Stoneman, Russell, Pitcher, 
 Gibbs, Gordon, Michler, Duane, Tidball, Benet, Bond, McKeever, 
 and Buford, who supported the Union, and Jackson (Stonewall), 
 Maxey (Senator), Buckner, Rhett, E. K. Smith, Bee, W. D. Smith, 
 
10 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNS1DE. 
 
 D. R. Jones, Wilcox, Pickett, Ben Robinson, T. A. Washington, 
 Thomas K. Jackson, G. H. Steuart, and Withers, who opposed it. 
 Immediately upon his graduation, BURNSIDE joined the Army, 
 and was sent to Mexico, with which the United States were at war. 
 Active negotiations for peace had commenced before he reached the 
 seat of war, in which he took no part, except to escort a baggage 
 train from Vera Cruz to the capital city, through a hostile country, 
 filled with guerrillas, a service which he performed with such skill 
 and discretion as gave promise of future distinction, and received 
 the commendation of his superiors. After that, as first lieutenant 
 in Bragg s battery, organized as cavalry, he was employed in the 
 difficult and perilous duty of escorting the mails across the plains 
 infested by hostile savages. 
 
 In 1853, having invented a Jbreech-loading rifle, which, although 
 since superseded by later inventions, was a great improvement over 
 any then in use, he resigned his commission, and engaged in the 
 manufacture of this new weapon at Bristol. The enterprise proved 
 unfortunate. He failed to secure a contract with the government, 
 not from the lack of merit in the invention, but from his indignant 
 refusal to employ the intervention of a lobbyist, or middle man, 
 who enjoyed the favor of the War Department. Leaving Bristol, 
 for which he always retained the strongest attachment, and where 
 he afterward returned and set up his household gods, he entered 
 the service of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, of which his 
 friend and fellow-student, General McClellan, was vice-president, 
 and where he soon rose to the important position of treasurer. 
 
 At this time. General BURNSIDE was a Democrat in his politics. 
 He had run as a Democratic candidate for Congress in his district 
 in Rhode Island. During the agitation that preceded the outbreak 
 of the rebellion he strongly urged the restoration of harmony and 
 the preservation of the Union, by peaceful means, to avoid the 
 conflict of arms. To this end he was ready to make important 
 
ADDRESS OF MB. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. \ 1 
 
 concessions to allay the Southern discontent. But when the first 
 gun upon Fort Sumter fired alike the Southern and the North 
 ern heart, he promptly, and without a moment s hesitation, 
 offered to his country the sword that she had taught him to use. 
 He was selected for the command of the First Rhode Island 
 Regiment. In reply to a dispatch from Governor Sprague, inquir 
 ing how soon he could leave for his command, he answered "at 
 once"; and the next morning he was in Providence busily engaged 
 in organizing and preparing it. In an incredibly short time the 
 regiment was raised and equipped ; and in two days after the first 
 man was enlisted a battery of six rifled guns with five hundred 
 men was on its way to Washington, and in two days more the rest 
 of the regiment followed. Notwithstanding this promptness, such 
 was the vigor of the Colonel, seconded by his subordinate officers, 
 and such his valuable military experience, that the regiment left 
 fully armed, equipped, and provisioned, and gained the highest 
 praise by its appearance of discipline, efficiency, and soldierly 
 bearing. None of the new and hastily organized regiments came 
 into the service better prepared for their duties. Its evening parade 
 was a favorite resort of Mr. Lincoln, who, accompanied by high 
 dignitaries, civil and military, often came to witness and admire its 
 evolutions. 
 
 In the battle of Bull Run, which followed, Colonel BURNSIDE 
 commanded a brigade, and, as was justly said in a memoir read before 
 the Loyal Legion by Colonel William Goddard, who served under 
 him, "no share in the disasters of that conflict can be assigned to 
 him or to his troops." In the autumn of 1861, General BUENSIDE, 
 raised to the rank of brigadier-general, took command of the " Burn- 
 side Expedition " to the coast of North Carolina. The conception, 
 the plan, and the execution of that important enterprise attest the 
 uncommon military ability of its originator and leader. The secret 
 of the expedition was well kept, kept even from the penetrating 
 
12 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 scrutiny of the newspapers. It sailed in January, 1862, the object 
 ive point being known only to the commander and the few confiden 
 tial officers whom it was necessary to intrust with the information. 
 A violent storm struck the fleet, off Hatteras, and dispersed the ves 
 sels, so that more than a week elapsed before they reached the ren 
 dezvous. There they encountered a succession of gales, which 
 threatened them with destruction. The ships were crowded into a 
 narrow space, with insufficient holding ground, beaten about by the 
 winds and waves, entangling their hawsers, running foul of each 
 other, and filled to overflowing with discouraged and sea-sick men, 
 and the expedition seemed to be predestined to failure, by force of the 
 elements, without the opportunity to fire a gun. In the midst of 
 all this disastrous confusion, the calm features and striking figure 
 of BDENSIDE appeared cons picuous, meeting every emergency, pro 
 viding against every calamity, confident, imparting to his men his 
 own indomitable cheerfulness, and inspiring them with his own un 
 failing hopefulness. The gallant and able defenders of the position 
 flattered themselves with the easy repulse of any assault that could 
 be made against it, by land or by water, even unaided by the ele 
 ments, which seemed to have conspired in their favor. They were 
 strongly fortified, naturally, and by artificial works, skillfully con 
 structed, and of great strength. 
 
 A not over-friendly pen thus describes the situation : 
 
 When a generation shall arrive that lias time to read the romance of the 
 four years wo call the rebellion, none of its episodes will stand out more pic 
 turesquely than BURNSIDE S audacious assault upon the rebel seaboard at its 
 most defensible point. New Berne was the knot of a ganglia of railway sys 
 tems. An army of one hundred thousand men could have been concentrated 
 on its circumvallating land and water lines long before BURNSIDE felt justi 
 fied in attacking. The rebels were content with confronting the expedition 
 with equal or but slightly superior numbers, and though they had much in 
 their favor, the admirable courage and intrepid combinations of the Union 
 commanders wrested lines and defenses from well-organized defenders that 
 in any other war or at any other time would have given the victors an imper 
 ishable fame. Landing his little army below New Berne, on the Neuse River, 
 BUKNSIDE deployed his lines with a simple faith in the Army regulations that 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 13 
 
 would have given joy to such a martinet as Von Moltke or Frederick. The 
 rebels were admirably protected and had not anticipated serious peril to dis 
 turb the serenity of their confidence. Great fields of yellow furze, with a 
 thin growth of pines, separated their works from the river. These works, be 
 ginning with an enormous railway embankment that reached the dimension 
 of bastions at certain points, were calculated to hold an army in check until 
 field-guns and regular approaches should demolish them. BURNSIDE, though 
 timid in peace and diffident in war, was never cautious in battle. He be 
 lieved that armies nearly equal in numbers could find no better business than 
 fighting a situation out on the first opportunity. Heckmann, the dashing com 
 mander of the Ninth New Jersey Infantry, took the lead, and the regiment 
 tore across the field on a run. They found the men behind the works as full 
 of ardor as themselves. The Man of the Jerseymeu, however, had caught the 
 Connecticut troops and New Yorkers, and the line, though mowed down and 
 almost annihilated, reached the railway, surmounted, crossed the ditch on the 
 side, and in a few minutes the astonished and confident rebels were prisoners. 
 This is not the place, however, to relate this admirably complete military di- 
 
 This was the earliest important Union success in the East. The 
 grumblers, a class always numerous, and noisy in proportion to 
 their ignorance of the purposes or even of the destination of the ex 
 pedition, had been loud in their predictions of its failure, in which 
 they were strengthened by vague reports of disaster and shipwreck. 
 When the news of victory \vas flashed across the wires, one exultant 
 shout rose throughout the North, and the name of BURNSIDE was 
 in every mouth. 
 
 General BURNSIDE then joined the army of the Potomac, where 
 he organized the Ninth Corps, which rendered so important serv 
 ices, and won for itself and its commander so high renown. On 
 the 14th of September, 1862, General BURNSIDE achieved the vic 
 tory of South Mountain. At the battle of Antietam, he com 
 manded the left wing of the army. Returning to the army of the 
 Potomac, he resumed command of his favorite Ninth Corps. Here 
 he was offered the command of the Army. He declined it, with 
 unaffected diffidence, as he had twice before; but it was pressed 
 upon him by positive orders, and he could not, longer, without in 
 subordination, refuse it. The battle of Fredericksburgh followed. 
 
14 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 I do not propose to enter upon any discussion of that conflict, so 
 disastrous to the Union arms. I wish to arouse no animosities, by 
 bringing up disputed points; but I should not render justice to 
 the occasion, did I not say that, in the judgment of men infinitely 
 better instructed than I in military affairs, had the general been 
 seconded by the loyal and cordial co-operation of all his chief sub 
 ordinates, and had he received promised appliances, victory would 
 have perched on the Union banners. Such, I have no doubt, was 
 his own opinion, although I never heard him declare it. 
 
 As magnanimous in disaster as he was modest in success, he as 
 sumed the whole responsibility of the defeat, and made no com 
 plaint. He simply demanded the removal of certain officers, as 
 the condition on which alone he could efficiently and satisfactorily 
 remain at the head of the Army. This condition not complied 
 with, he resigned, and turned over the command to General Hooker. 
 When urged to make public his grievances, he replied that it would 
 embarrass General Hooker, whose success he sincerely desired, and, 
 with his hopeful disposition, believed in. Time and history, he 
 said, would vindicate him, and if they failed to do so, it was better 
 that he should remain under a cloud of undeserved reproach than 
 that a word should be added to the dissensions, already too preva 
 lent, in the Army. An appeal to the popular feeling, in a matter 
 of this kind, was utterly abhorrent to his ideas of military discipline. 
 In the order transferring his command, he said, after praising the 
 courage, patience, and endurance of the men, "Continue to exercise 
 these virtues, be true in your devotion to your country, and to the 
 principles you have sworn to maintain, give to the brave and skill 
 ful general who has so long been identified with your organization, 
 and who is now to command you, your full and cordial support and 
 co-operation, and you will deserve success." 
 
 The President refused to accept General BURNSIDE S resignation 
 of his commission, and appointed him to the command of the 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 15 
 
 Department of the Ohio, where he rendered eminent and conspicu 
 ous service, clearing the country of guerrillas, and affording pro 
 tection to the loyal population. Attacked by Longstreet, "with 
 vastly superior forces, he retired, after repulsing the enemy, which 
 outnumbered him nearly three to one, at Campbell s Station, to 
 Knoxville, which he occupied and fortified, and where he success 
 fully resisted the siege which that able general laid to it. A ter 
 rific assault was made upon his fortifications, and was repulsed 
 with equal impetuosity; and the enemy was driven back, with the 
 loss of fourteen hundred men. Encouraged by dispatches from 
 General Grant, urging the importance of maintaining the position 
 which he occupied, General BURNSIDE held out, by the fertility of 
 his resources, by his patience, persistence, and unfailing hopeful 
 ness, with all which qualities he had the happy faculty of inspiring 
 his men, till Longstreet, warned by the approaching relief of Sher 
 man, was obliged to raise the siege. 
 
 Again assigned to the command of his own Ninth Corps, Gen 
 eral BURNSIDE participated, actively, in the closing operations of the 
 war, under General Grant. In front of Petersburgh he undertook 
 the mine, about which so much has been said and written. I have 
 not time to go into an account of this work ; but I do not hesitate 
 to say that had he been permitted to carry out that enterprise, on 
 his own plans, and with troops of his own selection, it would have 
 been a success. The whole matter was investigated by the Con 
 gressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, which said in its 
 report : 
 
 The cause of the disastrous result of the assault of the 30th of July last is 
 mainly attributable to the fact that the plaus and suggestions of the General 
 [BURNSIDE] who devoted his attention for so long a time to the subject, who 
 had carried out to so successful completion the project of mining the enemy s 
 works, and who had so carefully selected and drilled his troops for the pur 
 pose of securing whatever advantages might be attainable from the explosion 
 of the mine, should have been so entirely disregarded by a general who had 
 evinced no faith in the successful prosecution of that work, had aided it by 
 
16 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 no countenance or open approval, and had assumed the entire direction and 
 control only when it was completed and the time had come for reaping any 
 advantage that might be derived from it. 
 
 
 
 And General Grant, in his testimony before the Committee on 
 the Conduct of the War, frankly said "General BURNSIDE wanted 
 to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so 
 it would have been a success." Surely, if human testimony avails 
 anything, this is a sufficient vindication of General BURNSIDE. 
 
 At the close of the rebellion, General BURNSIDE resigned his 
 commission, and retired to private life. In 1866 he was elected 
 governor of Rhode Island ; he was twice re-elected ; w r hen he de 
 clined further service. In 1875 he entered this body, where his 
 honorable and useful course is well known to us all. On the expi 
 ration of his term of office he was re-elected. 
 
 In 1870, during the Franco-German war, General BURNSIDE 
 was in Europe. At Versailles, the headquarters of the invading 
 army, he made the acquaintance of the German Emperor, the 
 Crown Prince, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, on all of whom he 
 made a favorable impression, and especially on Bismarck. Dr. 
 Russell wrote to the London Times, " Bismarck likes him [BURN- 
 SIDE], Indeed there are few persons of any nation who will not 
 be touched by the cordial nature and uprightness of the man, by 
 his solid good sense and kindliness of nature, and by his clearness 
 of perception unmarred by affectation, selfishness, or any affectation 
 of statesmanship, which is perhaps the highest diplomacy. Count 
 Bismarck has a penchant for Americans of a certain high stamp. 
 He says I like self-made men. It is the best sort of manufacture 
 in our race. " In the interest of peace General BURNSIDE went, 
 under a flag of truce, twice to Paris, where he had interviews with 
 Jules Favre, General Trochu, and other members of the govern 
 ment. The visit was attended with considerable personal danger, 
 as there was no communication permitted between the hostile lines, 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 17 
 
 and the General and his party were fired on at their approach, their 
 flag of truce being misunderstood. 
 
 He went in no official capacity, but was the bearer of certain 
 suggestions from Count Bismarck to Monsieur Jules Favre, in 
 relation to an armistice for the purpose of enabling the French 
 people to elect a constituent assembly, to replace the fallen empire, 
 and to enter into negotiations for peace. Count Bismarck author 
 ized General BURNSIDE to say that he would grant an absolute 
 armistice of forty-eight hours for holding an election, and give 
 every facility for a fair election as well as for the subsequent 
 departure of the members elected for the city of Paris for the place 
 where the constituent assembly might meet. The government of 
 Paris was not, however, disposed to permit the election of a con 
 stituent assembly, which might deprive it of power, and General 
 BURNSIDE S mission simply opened the door for future negotia 
 tions. The General, after his second visit to Paris, obtained from 
 Count Bismarck permission for about one hundred Americans to 
 leave Paris, many of them without funds and in a deplorable con 
 dition. 
 
 The General was impressed with the appearance of Paris, invested 
 by an immense army; isolated from the rest of the world, except 
 when a mail was received under a flag of truce, or sent away by a 
 balloon; with five hundred thousand troops in the city, and ten 
 thousand sailors manning the heavy guns on the outer forts ; with 
 its theaters closed, its gas-lights extinguished, and its markets des 
 titute of meat, poultry, fish, and game. He was not, at the time, 
 communicative respecting his visit, but he expressed his opinion 
 that Paris could not be successfully defended, and that it could not 
 be taken by assault. 
 
 In 1852, General BURNSIDE married Mary Richmond Bishop, 
 a most excellent and accomplished woman, graced with every vir 
 tue that adorns her sex. After a most happy union, she died in 
 2 B 
 
18 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. 1WRNSIDE. 
 
 1876. During the five years that he survived her he did not cease 
 to lament her. 
 
 General BURNSIDE united as many excellencies with as few fail 
 ings as often meet in one character. Brave, manly, generous, he 
 joined to the rugged masculine virtues and " all that may become 
 a man " a softness and gentleness of disposition that became a woman. 
 Quick in his conception, rapid in his processes, he was sometimes 
 hasty in his judgments ; but he always held them open to evidence, 
 and subject to argument, and with a singular absence of the pride 
 of opinion, he changed them, frankly, on conviction. He believed 
 in general laws, to the test of whose principles he brought particu 
 lar cases. Incapable of guile, liberal in his estimate of men, he 
 was, occasionally, too little suspicious of the guilefulness of others. 
 Yet he was no mean judge of character, and no man long deceived 
 him; or ever twice. He had an instinctive horror of injustice, and 
 a genuine contempt for meanness ; yet his horror of the one and 
 his contempt for the other were, to a certain extent, modified by his 
 charitableness; and after strongly denouncing a wrong, he would 
 interpose some palliation for the wrong-doer, would find some gen 
 erous mitigation of the offense which he could not defend and could 
 not overlook. No man was firmer in his friendships or more faith 
 ful to his convictions. Nothing could tempt him to an act which 
 his conscience condemned. No sophistry, no personal appeal, could 
 move him from his fixed idea of right. 
 
 General BURNSIDE was a man of profound religious beliefs. He 
 held firmly to the truths of religion, natural and revealed, and had 
 full confidence in a superintending Providence, which, whether 
 working by general laws, or by special interposition, he cared not 
 to inquire, ruled in the affairs of men. He had a faith, almost su 
 perstitious in its force, that men were rewarded for their good, and 
 were punished for their evil deeds, even in this world ; that, in the 
 long run, a man did not suffer from an honest conduct, or profit 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 19 
 
 from a dishonest one. Often when, under a sense of injustice toward 
 himself, or lamenting it in others, he has said to me, " Well, there 
 is a good Father above, who watches over us, and who will bring 
 all this out right in the end " ; and while holding, Avith the tenacity 
 of conviction, to his own deliberate judgments, he was most gener 
 ous in his estimate of others, never seeking or, save in the plainest 
 cases, accepting an unworthy motive, when a worthy one could be 
 found applicable. 
 
 He had also an uudoubting faith in elective institutions, and that 
 the people, however they might be misled in the beginning, would 
 ultimately decide, correctly and patriotically, every question on which 
 they were called upon to act. That sanguine temperament, which 
 enters so largely into the elements of success, made him always con 
 fident of the final triumph of the political principles in which he 
 firmly believed. He had what seemed to me an exaggerated esti 
 mate of the rights and just powers and duties of our government 
 toward the other American States ; and looked forward to the su 
 premacy of our flag over almost the entire continent, a consumma 
 tion, however, which, as he fully believed it would come in God s 
 good time, he would not hasten by act of violent aggression, al 
 though, as the Senate knows, he was strongly in favor of asserting 
 our rights by declaratory legislation. 
 
 Need I speak, in this presence, of General BURNSIDE S hospi 
 tality, so cordial ! so elegant ! yet so simple and so unostentatious ! 
 Who that has enjoyed it, who that has seen his genial countenance 
 and commanding form, at the head of his table, can forget them? 
 
 General BURNSIDE was strongly attached to rural pleasures and 
 addicted to agricultural pursuits. His little estate of fifty-seven 
 acres, near Bristol, and named " Edghill Farm," after his father 
 and his paternal grandmother, was a model farm, and, by the ap 
 plication of science and practical experience, had been brought to a 
 high state of cultivation ; and prouder than of all his successes in 
 
20 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNS1DE. 
 
 the field, and in the forum, he seemingly was of his meadow that 
 cut three tons to the acre, and of his cornfield that yielded sixteen 
 hundred bushels to twelve acres. His herd of Alderneys, of the 
 purest blood, and of the finest character, was the admiration of the 
 neighborhood. He was very fond of his horses and his cattle 
 which such is the effect of steady kindness even upon the brute 
 creation knew his voice, and always welcomed his approaching 
 steps. His favorite horse, the gift of some unknown friend, that 
 had borne him on many a hard-fought field, lived to the age of 
 nigh thirty years, and, long past service to his owner, became, by 
 reason of age and infirmity, a burden to himself, till life was noth 
 ing but a prolonged suffering. Yet the General was reluctant, even 
 at the dictate of humanity, to have him killed. At last he yielded, 
 and ordered the animal to be shot, but not till he should have de 
 parted for Washington. The time of that departure never came. 
 The day when the lifeless body of the Senator was borne from the 
 farm that he loved so well, the faithful beast was shot. 
 
 General BUKNSIDE delivered several speeches and addresses at 
 agricultural meetings. These were replete with sound doctrine, 
 practical suggestions, and sturdy common sense. Among his pa 
 pers was an address that he had prepared, to be delivered before 
 the Aquidnic Agricultural Society of Rhode Island, whose fair a 
 slight indisposition, just before the fatal attack, had prevented him 
 from attending. In the cultivation and improvement of his farm 
 he took the greatest delight. He loved to watch the ripening fruit, 
 the young trees putting forth their tender leaves, and extending 
 their growing branches, the yellow field, tremulous with the wav 
 ing harvest. Always, on the adjournment of the Senate, he turned, 
 with eager steps, to his chosen acres. They are situated on a ridge 
 of land gently sloping to Mount Hope Bay, an indentation of the 
 broader Narragansett, and navigable to the shore of the farm, com 
 manding a view, seldom equalled, by land and water, including 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY, OF RHODE ISLAND. 21 
 
 a portion of the island that gives its name to the State, the beauti 
 ful rural town of Bristol, the white roofs of Fall River, whose 
 tall chimneys continually darken the sky with the smoke of toil, and 
 Mount Hope, the ancient seat of King Philip, and the place where 
 that renowned warrior was slain. The house is of a quaint and pecu 
 liar construction, built after the General s own fancy, and- from his 
 own designs, and, in its architecture and appointments, suggesting 
 the idea of a maritime structure. Here he dispensed an elegant and 
 profuse, yet simple and inexpensive, hospitality. The highest per 
 sonages in the land and the humblest soldier that ever fought by 
 his side met the same cordial reception, the same frank and unaf 
 fected welcome. The great dining-room, around whose table many 
 who listen to me have sat, is inclosed with broad piazzas, having 
 curious and original arrangements, the fruit of the General s me 
 chanical tastes, for protection from the fervid heats of summer and 
 the chilling blasts of winter, and is distinguished by an enormous 
 fire-place, over which rise the huge antlers of a great deer or caribou. 
 Ah ! the genial hospitality of that famous room ! In my mind s- 
 eye the picture is before me! The farm is a lovely spot, never 
 lovelier than on the sad day when I saw it last, bathed in the soft 
 light of early November, bending beneath the golden weight of 
 autumn, resplendent with the hues of the dying year. 
 
 General BUKNSIDE S death was very sudden. The afternoon 
 before he was at my house, in Providence. He had been a little 
 ill, for a few days previous, but with nothing that caused appre 
 hension. He left me gaily, promising to return the next morning. 
 He insisted upon walking to the railroad station, half a mile distant, 
 saying that the exercise would do him good. On the following 
 morning I received a telephonic message that he was very ill, and 
 requesting me to come to him. Before a carriage could be brought 
 to the door, a second message came, saying that he was dead. He 
 had been alarmingly sick scarcely an hour. Of all those who 
 
22 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNS IDE. 
 
 loved him, only his faithful and attached servants stood by his 
 dying bed. Shall we lament the manner of such & death ? Is it 
 not better than the slow decay, the wasted form, the failing mind 
 of age ? To him whom a life of usefulness and of goodness has 
 prepared for his coming, death, when it comes unannounced, 
 comes robbed of half his terrors. Let us find consolation for that 
 portion of him which has died in the contemplation of that portion 
 which could not die, in the memory of his services to his country, 
 his great achievements, his unselfish generosity, his patriotism, his 
 public and his private virtues. 
 
 General BURNSIDE was of fine address, of a commanding stature, 
 a strikingly handsome man. The frankness of his expression and 
 the sweetness of his smile, at once, won upon the observer, and pre 
 pared him for that favorable judgment which a fuller acquaintance 
 never failed to confirm. His age was fifty-seven. I think that 
 no man survives him whose form and features are known to a 
 greater number of persons. They were calculated to attract atten 
 tion, and once seen were not likely to be forgotten. His acquaint 
 ance in the Army, where he held such large commands, his frequent 
 journeyings at home, and his foreign travel; his entrance into Paris 
 at the time, and under circumstances that rendered him the ob 
 served of all observers, made him familiar to hundreds of thou 
 sands who did not have his personal acquaintance. 
 
 Upon my personal relations with General BURNSIDE I do not 
 dwell; I scarce venture to speak of them. As you know, Sena 
 tors, they were of the most intimate and tender character. During 
 our whole service together, they were never disturbed by differences 
 or clouded by doubt or distrust. Not always agreeing upon public 
 measures, we differed, on those rare occasions when we did differ, 
 with mutual respect and confidence. He \vas the most lovable 
 man that I ever knew ; and I loved him, I love him still, with a 
 love which Avill find no successor to him, in my affection. Not a 
 
ADDRESS OF MB. HAMPTON, OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 23 
 
 day has passed since I last looked upon him, scarcely a waking 
 hour, when he has not been in my mind. And even if I could 
 have forgotten him, I should have been reminded of him by the 
 expressions of sympathy which have continually met me. 
 
 Ah ! Jonathan ! my brother ! lorne 
 
 And friendless I must looke to be ! 
 That harte whose woe thou oft hast borne 
 
 Is sore and strickene nowe for thee ! 
 Younge bridegroome s love on brydal morne 
 
 Oh it was lyghte to thyne for me. 
 Thy tymeless lotte I now must playne, 
 Even on thyne own highe places slayue. 
 
 Friend, companion, brother ! hail and farewell ! The memory 
 of thy virtues and of thy services, and that thou didst deem me 
 worthy of thy friendship and thy confidence are my chief consola 
 tion, in the irreparable loss that I have suffered. 
 
 Address of Mr. HAMPTON, of South Carolina. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT, it was the good fortune of the honorable Senator 
 from Rhode Island the father of the Senate who has just spoken 
 so feelingly of his distinguished colleague, whose untimely death 
 we deplore, to have known him long and intimately, and to have 
 thus known him was to love him. Bound to him, as he was, by 
 the strong ties of the closest friendship and the most intimate party 
 affiliation, it is natural that in speaking of him his language is that 
 of eulogy, for the words he has uttered came warm and direct from 
 his heart. So, sir, do mine, though my personal acquaintance with 
 General BURNSIDE dated only from my entrance as a Senator into 
 this Chamber. But my association with him upon this floor, in the 
 committee-room, and in social intercourse soon impressed me with 
 his many high and attractive qualities, and taught me not only to 
 admire him but to regard him as a personal friend. In the dark 
 
24 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BUENSIDE. 
 
 days of the civil war, when we stood in opposing ranks, I learned 
 to respect him as a true, brave, and gallant soldier one who fol 
 lowed his convictions of right with earnest singleness of purpose; 
 who fought not from ambition or a desire of glory, but from a deep 
 sense of duty, and who in every act of his honorable military career 
 subordinated all private considerations to the public good. When 
 he sheathed his sword, which had never been tarnished by dishonor 
 nor stained by cruelty, he promptly extended the hand which had 
 so resolutely grasped that sword in war to those who had been his 
 enemies. Magnanimous as he was brave, his heart was large enough 
 and generous enough to recognize, when peace came to our distracted 
 country, every American citizen as his fellow-countryman, and no 
 act of his since the war was inspired by sectional hate or political 
 animosity. War, with all its attendant, inevitable horrors, could 
 not change his gentle and noble nature, for he seemed to be abso 
 lutely free from all the bitterness it might naturally have engen 
 dered, and his highest aim, his constant efforts were directed always 
 toward the reconciliation, the harmony, and the enduring peace of 
 the country. It was the recognition of his patriotic efforts in this 
 direction, together with the charm of his kind and genial manner, 
 that won for him the respect, the esteem, and the affection of his 
 colleagues from the South, and I feel assured that I give utterance 
 to the universal feeling prevailing among them when I express the 
 profoundest sorrow at his death. It is no disparagement to the 
 distinguished gentleman who has succeeded him, or to any one who 
 may hereafter do so, to assert that Ehode Island, however prolific 
 she may be of able and patriotic sons, will never send to this Chamber 
 one who can fill the place made vacant by his death more worthily 
 than he did, nor pass from among us amid deeper and more general 
 sorrow than is felt at his loss. This sorrow is as sincere as it is 
 general ; it is felt as keenly on this side of the Chamber as on the 
 other; as deeply by Southern men who fought in the confederate 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. EDMUNDS, OF VERMONT. 25 
 
 ranks as by Northern who supported the cause of the Union. It 
 seems, therefore, not inappropriate that I, who during the war stood 
 under the folds of the starry cross, should pay a tribute, however 
 feeble, to that gallant soldier who, amid all trials and vicissitudes, 
 in disaster as in success, bravely upheld the flag of the Union. 
 "Would that it were worthier"; but it is at least sincere, for it 
 comes from one who was his enemy in war, and in peace his political 
 opponent. Other Senators will doubtless tell of his distinguished 
 services to his State and to the country ; of his high qualities and 
 his noble nature; of his gracious manner and magnetic presence, 
 which gained for him everywhere, in all the walks of life, troops 
 of friends. I, too, sir, would fain dwell on these grateful themes, 
 but others have a higher right than myself to do so. Mine is the 
 humbler but not less grateful duty to pay a simple but heartfelt 
 tribute to the memory of a friend one who could always be trusted, 
 and whose conduct was uniformly marked by dignity, courtesy, and 
 kindness. His life-long friends, his party associates, his comrades 
 in arms, the whole people of the State that he loved and served so 
 well, have joined in bewailing his death and in honoring his memory. 
 They have worthily bedecked his tomb with wreaths of immortelles ; 
 I bring but a simple^pray of Southern cypress to lay it tenderly and 
 reverently on his grave. Peace to his ashes ; for of him it may with 
 truth be said that throughout his long, varied, and honorable career, 
 
 He bore without reproach 
 The grand old name of gentleman. 
 
 V^*/-I^ S 
 
 Address of Mr. EDMUNDS, of Vermont. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT : To the many brilliant and beautiful tributes 
 offered to the memory of Senator BURNSIDE I beg to add the 
 simple offering of my appreciation of some of the leading traits of 
 his character. 
 
26 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSWE. 
 
 The career of General BURNSIDE exemplifies, I think, in an 
 eminent degree, the life of a warrior who does not admit craft or 
 indirection among his weapons. Whether right or wrong, he was 
 one of the simplest and most direct of men. Calculation of inci 
 dents or consequences did not seem to enter into the measure of his 
 estimation of what it was fit for him to do, so far as it regarded its 
 effect upon himself in going forward with any enterprise or meas 
 ure in hand. If what was proposed appeared right according to 
 the standard that commended itself to him, he "followed right 
 because right is right, in scorn of consequence." Invective and 
 ridicule, in such a case, fell upon his head without, apparently, 
 diminishing in the least degree the real enthusiasm with which he 
 held fast to, and endeavored to advance, whatever cause he had 
 espoused. I have often thought when I have seen him not edu 
 cated in the law in its technical and precise character, nor yet 
 largely informed in the wider realms of municipal and public 
 jurisprudence stoutly maintain some proposition which, but for 
 the necessary conventionalities of all systems of government and 
 all relations between nations would have been proper and was 
 frequently in the abstract, how noble must be the character that 
 for the sake of what he believes does not hesitate to discard the 
 force of precedent and rebel against the mandates of authority. 
 
 Nor can we, I think, who act our short parts in the great drama 
 of government a stage on which there can be, humanly speaking, 
 no final drop-scene fail to admit how valuable to the continuing 
 interests of society are the elements in legislative bodies that resist 
 the force of precedent, that have small respect for what has been 
 because it has been, that are fettered by no technicalities and that 
 feel as free as if the world had just begun. 
 
 The tendency to a blind obedience to forms, to precedents, and to 
 methods is thus counterbalanced, just as, reciprocally, the converse 
 elements in a legislative body restrain excess in the opposite direc- 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. MAXEY, OF TEXAS. 27 
 
 tion. The equation and sum of perfect government, as we on this 
 continent understand it, is thus made up. But this is not the 
 proper occasion to enlarge upon these interesting topics. Let me, 
 rather, as I join his colleague and successor in mourning his un 
 timely departure, testify to the charming qualities of his private 
 character. I have known him for more than ten years, but not 
 intimately until he came to take his place in this great conclave of 
 the representatives of States. I am happy to remember that since 
 then I have enjoyed, frequently, his unostentatious but warm-hearted 
 and almost exuberant hospitality, and have been often honored with 
 his apparently unreserved confidence in respect of many matters of 
 public concern with which he had to deal. In our merely social 
 intimacy, courtesy, candor, and unfailing kindness of heart were his 
 constant characteristics. In relation to his connection with public 
 affairs and measures, he received praise without vanity or elation, 
 and criticism without annoyance. Generous and gentle, his very 
 faults seemed to attract the sympathy and touch the sensibility of 
 his friends. He has left us without warning, not as a deserter, but 
 in obedience to the power that dominates both senators and states. 
 May his future be as peaceful and happy as his past has been full 
 of the storms of war and the vicissitudes and labors of this our life. 
 
 Address of Mr. MAXEY, of Texas. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT, I leave to other and more skilled hands the 
 task of tracing the distinguished career of AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, 
 as General, Governor, and Senator, It is a more pleasing duty to 
 me to trace his private and social character as I knew him. 
 
 No man can attain and maintain eminent public positions, State 
 or national, in this country, without merit. To assume that he 
 could would be to assert that the people are ignorant or corrupt. 
 
28 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURN SIDE. 
 
 They are neither. They may be deceived for a time, but sooner or 
 later they will distinguish the false from the true. If false, the 
 man goes down. If he passes successfully the crucial test of criti 
 cal public opinion, all the combined powers of detraction, envy, 
 hatred, malice, and corruption cannot strike him down. 
 
 BURNSIDE underwent, and especially toward the close of the late 
 war, the severest ordeal of criticism some fair, some foul and 
 came out of the furnace as did the three Hebrews, "upon whose 
 bodies the fire had no power." 
 
 It has been well said by one who knew him more intimately 
 than any other man knew him : " When victory crowned his efforts 
 and congratulations poured in upon him, his reply was ever the 
 same, ( Not to me do these laurels belong, but to others. " 
 
 When dire disaster befell him he at once telegraphed his govern 
 ment: "The fault was mine; the entire responsibility of failure 
 must rest on my shoulders." 
 
 Such expressions are the exponents of true manhood. The brave 
 and generous people of his adopted State never faltered in their 
 faith in BURNSIDE, and emphasized it by calling him by three 
 successive elections to be governor soon after the war, and subse 
 quently, by two successive elections, to represent her in this chamber. 
 
 General J. B. Fry, his classmate, and a distinguished officer of 
 the Army, in a note to me, says: "The key to BURNSIDE S char 
 acter was his big-heartedness and his unfaltering honesty of pur 
 pose." General John Gibbon, an able and distinguished officer, 
 also in the Army, says : " His kindness of heart was proverbial, 
 and I doubt if he ever in his life enforced any rigid rule of disci 
 pline without a feeling of regret." Like testimony comes from all 
 his old Army associates. My acquaintance with him began in the 
 spring of 1843, when he came to West Point to enter the Military 
 Academy. I was just turning into my third class-year, a year his 
 senior in class, although he was my senior in age. He was then a 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. MAXEY, OF TEXAS. 29 
 
 well-developed man, with heavy beard, wearing it in the form he 
 retained through life. His manner was frank, independent, and 
 manly. Honesty was written in every feature. He soon became 
 a leading man in his class. In the assignment of rooms we were a 
 few doors apart, on what old West Point men will pleasantly 
 remember as Post No. 8, north barracks, long since torn down. I 
 graduated in 1846, and joined my regiment in Monterey, Mexico, 
 in the fall of that year. I met BURNSIDE again, after his gradua 
 tion, in the fall or winter of 1847, in the city of Mexico. 
 
 After the Army returned to the United States, I saw no more of 
 him until in this city, in the winter of 1852- 53, and not again until 
 we met here to enter the Senate, March 5, 1875. We were from 
 our entrance into the Senate to his death together on the Committee 
 on Education and Labor, for four years on the Committee on Mili 
 tary Affairs, and for a time on the Committee on Post-Offices and 
 Post-Roads. Our old intimacy was renewed, and on these commit 
 tees I had good opportunity of contrasting the young man I first 
 knew with the matured man who had played no inconspicuous part 
 in the great battle of life. He was the same manly, whole-souled, 
 big-hearted, honest man. 
 
 The Military Committee, as all know who have served on it, is 
 one of great labor, and many intricate and delicate questions are 
 submitted to it. 
 
 BUKNSIDE S acquaintance in the Army was very extensive. His 
 relations with many of the old officers were cordial, and yet I never 
 knew him to swerve in the report of a case submitted to him a 
 hair s breadth from what he believed the right of the case. He 
 has frequently said to me : " I am sorry I had to make that report, 
 but how could I help it?" 
 
 There is the key, "How could I help it?" 
 
 The French say noblesse oblige. In this country, thanks to free 
 government, we have no hereditary nobility, but we have a nobility 
 
SO LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 far above any that earthly title can give the nobility God impresses 
 on an honest man, and that nobility obliged BURNSIDE to do right, 
 as he understood the right to be. 
 
 When "off duty" he gathered his friends around him for social 
 intercourse. The most pleasant nights of the few I could spare 
 from duty in Washington have been under his hospitable roof, 
 where he delighted to gather his old-time friends without the 
 slightest regard to whether they had worn the blue or the gray. I 
 have been in these gatherings where the only man who had not 
 been at West Point or in Mexico with BURNSIDE would be his 
 beloved colleague, the senior Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. 
 Anthony], who was always on such occasions an honored guest, 
 contributing his full share of valuable instruction and interesting 
 anecdote in a kindly, pleasant way. I think BURNSIDE would 
 ha"ve thought any party at his house incomplete without Senator 
 Anthony. Devotion to his friends was a leading trait in his 
 character. BURKSIDE and I differed in our political creeds, yet it 
 never made the slightest difference in our personal relations. 
 Among the first of the telegrams I received last winter on my 
 re-election was one from him, and not one did I prize more highly. 
 
 I have taken pains to gather incidents of his life illustrative of 
 what I have said of his character. This which I shall relate, 
 gathered chiefly from the records of the case, is worthy of remem 
 brance. Major Julius J. B. Kingsbury, deceased, formerly of the 
 Army, was at his death the owner of valuable real estate, princi 
 pally in Chicago, worth about one million dollars. His only 
 children and heirs were Mrs. Mary K. Buckner, wife of General 
 S. B. Buckner, a distinguished and gallant officer in the Confede 
 rate Army, and Henry W. Kingsbury, a promising young officer 
 in the Union Army, who fell mortally wounded September 17, 
 1862, at the head of his regiment, the Eleventh Connecticut 
 Volunteers, at Antietam. On the 15th of May, 1861, General 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. MA KEY, OF TEXAS. 31 
 
 Buckner and wife, then living at Louisville, Ky., executed a 
 conveyance, without the knowledge of Henry Kingsbury, to him 
 of her interest in the property, of the value* at that time of about 
 five hundred thousand dollars. At that time Henry was a young, 
 unmarried man. The conveyance was absolute on its face, and 
 without Henry s knowledge was recorded in the registry of deeds 
 in Chicago. The first intimation in fact that he had of this deed 
 was given to him by General Buckner in this city, July 7, 1861. 
 It was accepted by Henry as a sacred trust, as is shown by his r< ply 
 in the conversation referred to. Both knew and felt that the clouds 
 of war were gathering thick and fast. They instinctively felt that 
 convictions would lead them to opposing sides. Absolute confidence 
 was felt, and justly so, by each in the other. Young Kingsbury 
 knew and felt that life in the midst of war was very uncertain. He 
 felt that as an honorable man, clothed with a sacred trust, he should 
 make provision to preserve to his sister her property in case of his 
 death, and to carry out this purpose wrote, on the 25th of March, 
 1862, at Fortress Monroe, Va., what he intended to be a will. In 
 that will or paper BURNSIDE was named one of the executors. He 
 had the absolute confidence of Henry Kingsbury and also of Gen 
 eral Buckner. He had enjoyed the friendship and confidence of 
 Henry s father in his lifetime and had that of his mother. Henry 
 Kingsbury married after the date of the conversation referred to, 
 and a child and heir was born unto him after his death. 
 
 This necessitated the settlement of the question of title to the 
 Chicago property. Was the deed to be held an absolute convey 
 ance, or was it a trust? In the investigation of this intricate and 
 delicate question the paper designed to be a will became important, 
 not as a will, but as a writing showing the character in which Henry 
 held his sister s interest in the property. 
 
 BURNSIDE, as executor, set to work to find and possess this will 
 or paper. On the 12th of June, 1869, he found it in possession of 
 
32 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 a Mr. Hazard in the city of New York. Hazard refused to deliver % 
 it up, and possession was only obtained through a contested appli 
 cation before the surrogate, about May 1, 1870. Letters testament 
 ary were issued to BURNSIDE, and on the 9th of the same month 
 the will was admitted to probate in Virginia, and an authenticated 
 copy was soon after exhibited to the county court of Cook County, 
 in which Chicago is situated, and ordered to record. 
 
 The outcome of the litigation that ensued was, that the deed from 
 Buckner and wife to Henry W. Kingsbury was adjudged to be a 
 trust, and Mrs. Buckner s property was rightfully restored to her. 
 
 Of young Kingsbury the Supreme Court of Illinois says : 
 
 The late Henry W. Kiugsbury was, as this case shows, not only a trustee 
 of the property for his sister, but was an honest trustee. 
 
 What a splendid monument to his memory ! What an inherit 
 ance, infinitely beyond riches, to leave to his child, unborn at his 
 death ! 
 
 General Buckner, in a note to me in respect to these proceedings, 
 speaking of BURNSIDE and his efforts to find, possess, and establish 
 the will, says : 
 
 His sole object was to sec full justice clone between all the parties con 
 cerned, without partiality or favor to any. He preserved the esteem, I feel 
 assured, of all the parties, and certainly preserved the high regard and affec 
 tion in which I constantly held him during our long and continued association 
 aud friendship. His sole desire was to discharge fully the trust reposed in 
 him by his young friend, Henry Kingsbury, but the fact that justice and 
 equity were on my side does not lessen my feeling of gratitude for his noble 
 conduct. 
 
 This whole case illustrates the scrupulous integrity of the man. 
 
 General Heth, BURNSIDE S classmate, roommate, and life-long 
 friend, relates the following, well worthy of preservation, as illus 
 trative of BURNSIDE S sense of honor. The extract is from the 
 paper read to his class October 27, 1881 : 
 
 During the latter part of President Pierce s administration, Congress, de 
 siring to encourage and stimulate the invention and perfectiou of breech- 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. MAXET, OF TEXAS. 33 
 
 loading amis for military purposes, appropriated to this end $100,000. Stimu 
 lated by this prize, many breech-loading guns were patented. Our classmate 
 invented one. When Mr. Buchanan s administration came into power, the 
 Secretary of War decided to convene a board of officers representing all arms 
 of the service, and informed the competitors that the decision of this board 
 would be final. The board met, consisting of, I believe, thirteen officers, and 
 after a very thorough and careful examination, unanimously awarded tlie 
 prize to our classmate. About a month after the adjournment of the board I 
 visited Washington and found BURNSIDE there. 
 
 I asked him how he was getting on. He replied, "Badly; there is some 
 thing wrong; but I will know all to-night." We were occupying the same 
 room. After midnight he came in, awoke me, and said : " Heth, I am a ruined 
 man. I met a man to-night by appointment, and he informed me if I would 
 pay $5,000 I could get the award ; otherwise not. I at once indignantly re 
 fused." And, after a moment, he added, "there is but one thing I regret, 
 and that is that I did not fell him to the ground." Assigning the patent of 
 his gun to his creditors, all that he then possessed in the world, he sold his 
 uniform coat and epaulettes, went to Illinois, and obtained employment under 
 his friend McClellan. 
 
 At the close of the war, Heth, like many Southern men, and 
 especially those who, like himself, had been officers of the Army 
 up to the breaking out of the war, was left without employment, 
 with a family to support, and bare of means. Finding himself in 
 this condition, he relates the following of General BURNSIDE : . 
 
 After the war ended he at once wrote me a kind and loving letter, request 
 ing me to meet him in this city. I came here, went to his hotel, sent up my 
 card, and in reply was requested to wait a few minutes; on reaching his room 
 I found him alone; he at once bolted the door. A few mouths before we had 
 been locked in a struggle for life or death, upon many bloody battle-fields. 
 
 For thirty minutes not a word \vas spoken. Your imaginations may, pos 
 sibly, picture the scene. He was first to break the silence. He said, "Heth, 
 old fellow, what are your plans?" I answered I had formed none. He re 
 plied, "I have formed them for you. Your father, during his life, was a large 
 owner and worker of coal property near Richmond ; return to Virginia and 
 find some good coal-lauds, and let us work them jointly; when found come 
 and see me." 
 
 The coal lands were found, and I again met him in New York. 
 
 He said, "We will work these lauds as equal partners, on one condition, 
 which I will presently state. I am now Governor of Rhode Island ; that 
 takes but little of my time ; I am also president of the " Providence Locomo 
 tive Works " ; that duty takes up some time, but every spare moment is oc 
 cupied iu superintending the building of a railroad in Illinois ; you must take 
 entire charge of this work in Virginia, and all that I promise to do is to honor 
 3B 
 
34 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E, BURNSIDE. 
 
 your drafts to any amount you may desire to draw for." During his senato 
 rial career I was frequently in Washington, and his hospitable house was ever 
 my home. The most pleasant sounds that reached my ears during these so 
 journs were the encomiums and praises heaped upon him by his political op 
 ponents. 
 
 Mr. President, while others have placed before the American peo 
 ple the public career, civil and military, of AMBEOSE E. BURNSIDE, 
 I have followed the course dictated by a friendship running through 
 thirty-eight years. He was manly and brave, big-hearted, gentle, 
 and true. He was noble, because God made him so. That his 
 people knew him and loved him was proved at his burial, where 
 Rhode Island stood mourning at h is grave. 
 
 Address of Mr. HARRISON, of Indiana. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT : Senator BURNSIDE was a native of Indiana, 
 from which State he entered the Military Academy in the year 
 1842. Since that time he has never resided in our State, but his 
 affectionate interest in the place of his birth, and in his relatives 
 who continued to reside there, was always manifest. In asking 
 a little time to-day, in which to present an unpretentious but very 
 sincere tribute to the memory of Senator BURNSIDE, I am not re 
 sponding merely to a formal duty which might seem to be imposed 
 upon me as a representative of the State in which he was born, 
 but also to the promptings of a friendship which, though brief, had 
 in it the element of endurance, for it was founded on a very high 
 respect for his character. 
 
 I shall always count it a pleasant incident of my introduction to 
 the Senate that I was so placed as to be much in his company dur 
 ing the last session of his service here. His greeting each morning 
 was like a benediction so much of grace and kindness was there 
 in it. In the light of a short intimate acquaintance I find no dif 
 ficulty in understanding the secret of that strong affection which 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. HARRISON, OF INDIANA. 35 
 
 existed between General BURNSIDE and all of those who were 
 brought much in contact with him, both in military and civil life. 
 
 He was a bold, frank, friendly, generous man. There are men, 
 and not a few, who selfishly absorb the lives and achievements of 
 others ; who deck themselves with laurels they have not won, and 
 strut in pilfered greatness. Such was not our friend. He did 
 reverence to merit and to high achievement wherever he saw it. 
 He applauded the heroic acts of others with no half-hearted cheer, 
 nor ever admitted to his generous soul the base suggestion that 
 when others were praised the world s thoughts were turned from 
 him. 
 
 Speaking of the Ninth Army Corps, which General BURNSIDE 
 commanded so long, his biographer says : " Jealousy, that bane of 
 military life, was unknown." I can accept this record with im 
 plicit faith, for jealousy never found harbor or hiding place in the 
 heart of the commanding general. There was no room in that 
 well-lighted breast for this black angel. As a subordinate, he 
 never failed to yield a quick and loyal obedience to his superior ; 
 nor ever sought to justify his own judgment in the council by a 
 hesitating support of the plan of battle which his superior had 
 chosen. He was a true soldier-; one who had not only a muster 
 but a cause, into the fellowship of which he received all who made 
 that cause common. He might join in the high rivalry of those 
 who would give most to this sacred cause, or win most honor to 
 the flag ; but if he might not be first to plant the flag on the ene 
 my s battlements, he would at least be found among those who 
 hailed with cheers both the flag and the victor. He never minified 
 the deeds of others to make his own more conspicuous. He was 
 no egotist, but always rated himself below the value at which 
 others appraised him. The modest way in which he often spoke 
 to me of his deficiencies as a contestant in the debates of this Cham 
 ber, I well remember. These were not the self-deprecating utter- 
 
36 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 ances of one seeking flattery. His sincerity was as conspicuous as 
 his modesty. Nor was his noble soul hurt or embittered by the 
 confession that others surpassed him. And here, I think, Mr. 
 President, we have the secret of that enduring summer which 
 warmed the heart and lighted the face of our beloved friend. 
 
 He was a man who kept the shield- of his personal honor bright 
 and unspotted. Dishonesty, meanness, subterfuge, deception, 
 roused his nature into flame, and always received his unstinted 
 denunciation. He was not content to disapprove of wrong ; lie 
 assailed it. All who knew him have witnessed how his soul kin 
 dled and his words grew hot at any recital of oppression or in 
 justice. 
 
 He was a man of great purity ajid delicacy of feeling. Coarse 
 ness and vulgarity seemed peculiarly offensive to him. He was 
 always a refined and courtly gentleman, full of sweet sympathies 
 and kindly deeds. 
 
 At the wide fireside of BURNSIDE S heart many guests have re 
 ceived warmth and light ; and coming again, after years of sepa 
 ration, have found that no old friend was ever crowded out of that 
 hospitable soul. 
 
 Humble men and common interests had his sympathies. Several 
 times, as he opened his mail at his desk, he has turned to read 
 aloud to me the letters of the farmer who had in charge the little 
 farm at Bristol. The news of the herd and the dairy, couched in 
 homely phrase, seemed greatly to please him, and the kindly words 
 he spoke of those who had these small interests in charge opened 
 to me a pleasant glimpse of a happy home. 
 
 The duty of bringing to our memory to-day the striking inci 
 dents in the honorable life of Senator BURNSIDE belongs to the 
 Senators from Rhode Island, and I would not intrude upon it. I 
 have alluded to some of those traits of the deceased which were so 
 conspicuous as to be easily marked by every one who knew him. 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. HARRISON, OF INDIANA. 37 
 
 Beneath these outeroppings of a great heart and life there were 
 doubtless beds of gold which time and intimacy only could reveal. 
 The senior Senator of this body, the colleague and close friend 
 of the deceased, has done tenderly and eloquently this last office of 
 an affection which even the youngest of us had time to notice and 
 admire. 
 
 But I will be excused, I am sure, if I allude to a few incidents 
 in the life of General BURNSIDE which seem to me to illustrate the 
 observations of his character made during the few months of our 
 close acquaintance here. 
 
 When the civil war broke out he had already achieved honor 
 able promotion in the service of one of the great railroad corpora 
 tions of the West. Before him the avenues of wealth and hon 
 orable distinction in civil life opened alluringly. But when the 
 call of his country came the enticements of wealth and ease did not 
 for a moment enthrall his patriotic spirit. Suddenly inquired of 
 by wire when he could take command of the First Rhode Island 
 Regiment, his answer was, " At once." And from that April day 
 until peace came again to a restored country he gave his time, his 
 heart, his life to the nation s service with an unselfish patriotism 
 that was never excelled. He had no days of sulking, but was 
 always ready for any honorable service to which a soldier might 
 l)e called. We may truthfully say of him what, in orders to his 
 corps after Autietam, he said of the commander of its third division 
 (General Rodman), who fell in that fight : " He has left a bright 
 example of unselfish patriotism, undimmed by one thought of self." 
 
 The command of the Army of the Potomac did not come to him 
 as the result of ambitious self-seeking. He had loyally supported 
 those who preceded him in this responsible trust. In addressing 
 General Halleck after his appointment he said : " Had I been 
 asked to take it I should have declined, but being ordered, I cheer 
 fully obey." Most bitterly did this modest soldier feel the jealousy 
 
38 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 which his appointment developed in his army. This is not the 
 place to apportion the praise or blame of Fredericksburgh. But 
 against the background of that bloody repulse some of the noblest 
 traits of General BURNSIDE are made conspicuous. He did not 
 indulge in whimpering complaints of others, but, with a courage 
 higher than that of battle, assumed the just responsibility of the 
 fight he had ordered. 
 
 The press of the country severely criticised the overburdened 
 President, and charged that he had forced BURNSIDE to fight 
 against his judgment. Mr. Raymond, the veteran editor of the 
 New York Times, who was at the headquarters of the army shortly 
 after the battle of Fredericksbugh, tells us that the President was 
 greatly depressed by these charges, and that BURNSIDE, hearing of 
 it, said : " Mr. President, I will at once relieve you on that score. 
 I will not allow any one to suffer for acts the entire responsibility 
 of which belongs to me." This purpose he nobly fulfilled in his 
 report. 
 
 When he was relieved from the command of the army, he said 
 to the President : " Neither you nor General Hooker will be a hap 
 pier man than myself if he shall gain a victory on the Rappahan- 
 iiock " ; and in his report of the movements of the army while 
 under his command, written long afterwards, he said : " I am not 
 disposed to complain of my lack of success in the exercise of the 
 command, and in view of the glorious results which have since at 
 tended the movements of that gallant army, I am quite willing to 
 believe that my removal was for the best." 
 
 If unfriendly criticism shall deny to him some of the qualities 
 of the perfect military leader, only base souls will refuse to do rev 
 erence to the nobility of his character. The black setting of disas 
 ter only makes these gems of the spirit shine more lustrously. But 
 we must not forget that Fredericksburgh was not BURNSIDE S only 
 fight. In the campaign on the Carolina coast, at Antietam, and in 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. HARRISON, OF INDIANA. 39 
 
 East Tennessee he gave high proof of most conspicuous ability as 
 a commander. 
 
 When we separated last spring there was no token of the near 
 approach of death. He seemed to be in the perfection of physical 
 health. Once afterward I saw him in Indiana, and as he rode with 
 me that quiet summer evening, I little thought I should see him 
 no more in life. We talked of the time when we should assemble 
 here again. But, alas ! when I came, not my friend but the em 
 blems of death were beside me. His death was sudden, and yet 
 there was not denied him a brief time in which to adjust the dra 
 peries of his gentle and reverent spirit ere he stepped into the pres 
 ence of the Great King. 
 
 Mr. President, in the death of General BURNSIDE we have lost 
 one who never denied his country or his friend ; one whose name 
 was never tainted by the flavor of a mean or corrupt act; one who 
 filled usefully high and exacting public trusts ; one whose spirit was 
 never soured by disappointment or poisoned by envy; one who 
 could be glad if upon the background of his own disaster another 
 might display a triumph for the cause he loved ; one who was al 
 ways a dispenser of hope and gladness. Surely these are traits 
 which we must not only admire but covet for ourselves. And as 
 our thoughts bring to the resurrection these qualities of our friend, 
 and clothe them with a beauty to the expression of which our words 
 are inadequate, may we not hope that the white-winged throng will 
 find new life in living hearts? 
 
 To the State of his adoption, where his active life was spent, I 
 bring to-day a sorrowful greeting from the State of his nativity. 
 Indiana mourns a son whose high career she followed with affection. 
 
40 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. RANSOM, of North Carolina. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT : Whatever of pleasure there can be in rendering 
 homage to the illustrious dead I feel when I unite in these honors 
 to the memory of General BURNSIDE. His great nature has left 
 an impression with me which I regret I have no words to express. 
 In many respects his was an extraordinary character. In the mem 
 orable " Oration on the Mauilian Law," the immortal Roman as 
 signs to Pompey the " first place " among his countrymen for his 
 gentleness to conquered Asia: Sed ne vestigium quidem cuiquam 
 pacato nocuisse dicatur. And the same orator, in the beautiful 
 "Appeal for Marcellus," adjudges Csesar " very like a God," be 
 cause of his magnanimity to his prostrate personal and political 
 enemies. The conqueror of the world was greatest when he had 
 conquered his own passions, Hodierno vero die te ipsum vicisti. At 
 the end of nineteen hundred years we realize in an American citi 
 zen the combination of the supreme excellences which the illustrious 
 orator claimed for his two most distinguished countrymen. On 
 the shield of BURNSIDE are united the moderation of Pompey and 
 the magnanimity of Csesar. On the death of Pompey as on the 
 fall of Csesar Rome was divided in her emotions. One party was 
 convulsed with deep grief and the opposing faction was elated with 
 maddening joy. On the death of BURNSIDE all hearts are touched 
 with grief. The union of sorrow is as broad as the union of the 
 country deep, sincere, and just. The chord that binds patriots, 
 friends, society, homes together has received a shock, and the sym 
 pathy of the good everywhere responds in sadness for the common 
 bereavement. 
 
 General BURNSIDE had not a great intellect ; but he had what is 
 better, a great heart. He was not a genius; he was not an orator; 
 he was not a great general ; he was not a great scholar ; lie was not 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. RANSOM, OF NORTH CAROLINA. 41 
 
 a great philosopher ; but he was more he was a philanthropist; he 
 was a patriot ; he was a hero ; he was a good mail. His virtues 
 were his strength ; his was not mental power, it was moral force ; 
 his was not the lightning from heaven, nor rays of light from the 
 sun, but it was the warmth of the earth making all things cheerful. 
 I regard his example as one on which the eyes of the young men of 
 the country should be fixed. It is an example for study. Let us 
 contemplate it for a moment. Without wealth, without illustrious 
 descent, without the favor of the great, without striking mental en 
 dowment, and without extraordinary good fortune, he attained dis 
 tinguished eminence both in war and peace. He commanded the 
 armies of his country, and he was an American Senator. He was 
 loved and honored at home, distinguished in foreign lands, and 
 leaves an illustrious name in history. To what was his success due ? 
 I have often thought of this question. In my opinion, and in that 
 judgment I think his best friends will unite, his distinction was due 
 to his great moral qualities, and to them alone. His virtues made 
 him great. As his integrity, his courage, his fortitude, his indus 
 try, his devotion, his unselfishness, his charity were great, so was 
 his character great, so was his life great. The virtues are the forces 
 and powers in life. The want of virtue with the greatest ability 
 made Bacon, the greatest of mankind, the most infamous ; the pos 
 session of great virtues without great ability made BURNSIDE, the 
 good man, famous. Napoleon s genius could not have retrieved the 
 disaster to the Union Army at Fredericksburg ; but the candor, 
 the chivalry, the honor, the sacrifice of BURNSIDE in his defeat 
 shed a halo on that bloody sunset as pure and as bright as the De 
 cember snow that glittered on those immortal hills. 
 
 His colleague, the venerated Senator from Rhode Island, in most 
 eloquent and tender words has embalmed to-day, as in a precious 
 casket, in the annals of the Senate, the services, the character, and 
 the fame of General BURNSIDE. I do not know who was the more 
 
42 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIUE. 
 
 fortunate, the living friend in his subject or the dead friend in his 
 eulogist. The picture, tis true, was not Alexander painted by 
 Apelles, but it was a "combination and a form indeed" of the 
 noblest virtues reflected from the mirror of the purest affections. 
 Every jewel sparkled in its own light, but every jewel was polished 
 and set by a master and loving hand. 
 
 The Senator from South Carolina, justly representing the senti 
 ment of the Southern people, has brought here and planted around 
 the tomb of the brave New Englander not alone the willows but 
 the evergreen laurels of his own beloved land; and with a soldier s 
 sympathy he has done more, he has held up the sword of his former 
 adversary in the light of the dazzling sun for the admiration of the 
 world and posterity, and it was so bright that I almost thought it 
 was his own stainless and glorious blade. 
 
 But, Mr. President, there was a tie between the dead Senator and 
 myself, springing from the sword but better than the sword, which 
 I should wrong him not to mention. You know that the Senator 
 as a general in the Union Army came in the early part of the civil 
 war to the shores of North Carolina, and there, with his gallant 
 comrades, achieved the victories of Hatteras, Roanoke Island, and 
 New Berne, over the not less gallant Southern troops. These were 
 among the first successes of the Union arms. Sir, I have seen 
 many of the brave soldiers who met and were captured by General 
 BURNSIDE in these engagements, and it is due to history that I 
 should declare here that there is not one of those gallant men who 
 has not borne willing testimony to his courage, his kindness, and his 
 magnanimity. I have never seen one soldier captured by General 
 BURNSIDE as a prisoner of war who did not speak of him with 
 friendly, if not brotherly, affection. But this is not all. I recog 
 nized here in this Chamber a sentiment of General BURNSIDE than 
 which history with all its examples of splendor furnishes nothing 
 grander or brighter. I speak not of what he conceived to be his 
 
ADDRESS OF MB. RANSOM, OF NORTH CAROLINA. 43 
 
 duty to his party. On that ground I shall not tread. But in all 
 else, in all my association with him on this floor, he never failed on 
 any occasion to render to North Carolina and her people any and 
 every service in his power. That State seemed endeared and sacred 
 to him. As he had stricken her in war, so in peace he felt it his 
 duty to befriend her. I never mentioned her name or her people to 
 him but his heart opened as to a talisman. His friendship for her 
 was deep, constant, and fervid. Her fame, her interests, her future 
 were objects of his care. Her soldiers especially were dear to him. 
 He loved the living, he almost hallowed the dead. What an hon 
 orable, beautiful, heroic sentiment I The knightly thought of a 
 Christian soldier. The picture of Achilles in his tent as he wept 
 and fasted over the dead body of Patroclus, his friend, has touched 
 the heart for over twenty-seven hundred years, but here was Achilles 
 paying honor to the memory of Hector and offering his ships to 
 Andromache and the children of Priam. 
 
 From every breast in the broad limits of North Carolina I send 
 this day to the people of Rhode Island a message of sympathy and 
 affection. At the grave of BURNSIDE North Carolina stands by her 
 sister Rhode Island with clasped hands and mingles her tears in the 
 urn of the patriot and soldier who struck her the hardest blows in 
 battle, but who opened to her the warmest heart in peace. From 
 no point in the great Republic will a deeper song of sorrow ascend 
 to the worth and memory of General BURNSIDE than the wail which 
 comes from the storm-rent bosom of Hatteras. On those wasted 
 shores and those fierce waters, in the solitudes by the sea, are still 
 heard the echoes of his cannon, the beat of his drums, the neigh of 
 his steeds, but above the troubled waves the voice is heard, the form 
 is seen, of a patriot, a countryman, a friend. Dark and fierce and 
 terrible as those waters are when the tempest rages, thank God, 
 when the storm has passed they reflect nothing but the peace of the 
 sun and the heavens. 
 
44 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. HAWLEY, of Connecticut. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT: Little remains to be said by me concerning our 
 beloved friend beyond expressing my grateful and hearty concur 
 rence in what has already been set forth. 
 
 He had long under his command in the Ninth Corps twenty-six 
 regiments and eight batteries from New England, including five 
 regiments from my own State. When his noble form came in 
 sight of the survivors upon festival days and at their frequent re 
 unions, the unmeasured roar of their greetings was good to hear. 
 I wish I could make clear to the Senate the love they bore him 
 and the sorrow they felt when he so suddenly departed. He de 
 served it. He abounded in the qualities that win such affection. 
 
 On Monday, the 15th of April, 1861, sitting in his office in the 
 city of New York, he received a telegram from Governor Sprague 
 asking how soon he could come to Rhode Island and take command 
 of the First Regiment. He answered simply: u At once"; and 
 reported the next morning in Providence. 
 
 His patriotism was unbounded. His courage was perfect and 
 his temper high. He was generous to friend and foe. He was 
 profoundly sympathetic in the presence of distress. He was 
 prompt, simple, and frank as a child in confessing a fault and 
 making amends; ready on the instant to assume all blame to him 
 self and distribute all honor to others. His knightly example of 
 unhesitating loyalty and total abnegation of self carried comfort and 
 strength to others. In high or low command, or with no com 
 mand at all, he was the eager, obedient servant of the Republic, 
 asking for nothing but that he might not be left idle. 
 
 After the battle of Fredericksburgh, in December, 1862, so 
 strong a hold had he upon the public regard that doubt began 
 to be expressed whether he had not been led to fight against his 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. ITAWLEY, OF CONNECTICUT. 45 
 
 better judgment, and whether the authorities at Washington were 
 not responsible for the buttle itself, as well as the failure. He 
 straightway wrote to General Halleck, without a shadow of criti 
 cism for any person whatever, setting forth his reasons for moving 
 earlier than was anticipated by the President and Secretary of War, 
 and at a point other than one he had previously indicated, thank 
 ing the government for the support and confidence he had received, 
 and declaring : " For the failure in the attack I am responsible, as 
 the extreme gallantry, courage, and endurance shown by the Army 
 was never exceeded, and would have carried the points had it been 
 possible." The letter was published throughout the country, 
 whereupon the defeated general won a place in the affections of the 
 people which triumphant victors might have envied, and from 
 which none of the contingencies of war or peace could ever have 
 dislodged him. 
 
 He was a soldier and a gentleman, truth-teller, and truth-lover. 
 " Whatever record leaps to life, he never shall be shamed." 
 
 No more in soldier-fashion will he greet 
 With lifted hand the gazer in the street. 
 
 He sleeps his last sleep, or rather he is awake forever, 
 say, with Abou Ben Adhem, to the angel cheerily : 
 
 I pray thee, then, 
 Write me as one who loves his fellow-men. 
 
 And we believe that he has been shown by the angel that his name 
 is among those whom love of God has blessed. We lament him ; 
 we sorely lament him ; but let us say as Cicero said of his friend 
 Scipio : " No evil has happened to him ; if to any, it has happened 
 to us who have lost him. But to be too greatly grieved by our 
 own loss is the part of one loving, not his friend, but himself." 
 
46 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BDRNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. JONES, of Florida. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT : It is needless for me to say that occasions like 
 this are too often regarded as requiring little more than the dry, 
 formal, and, if I may say it, heartless expressions of commendation 
 of those who speak more from a sense of public duty than a love 
 of the deceased. Every man who dies in his place in the Senate 
 must have something said about him, and as no one will ever be 
 found to express anything but praise on such occasions, it has been 
 accepted as a truism that no man ever died in the Senate who was 
 not entitled to his share of senatorial commentation. How often 
 has it been noted here that the political adversary who, in the life 
 time of his antagonist, could find in him nothing to admire or 
 praise, after death had ended his career was found disclosing to the 
 country in luminous sentences the varied virtues and talents which 
 distinguished the deceased. I rejoice, Mr. President, if such a 
 word is at all permissible upon such an occasion, that I am able to 
 say over the ashes of our departed friend, what it was often my 
 pleasure to say when he was living ; that in all the best qualities 
 of manhood, in heart and generous feeling, in unsullied integrity, 
 in gentleness and courage, in conscientious devotion to duty, in true 
 patriotism, in fidelity to friendship, in contempt of everything low 
 and ignoble, in appreciation of all that was high and honorable, in 
 charity and love for his species, in all the boundless resources of a 
 great, manly heart, Senator BURNSIDE had no superior in this 
 Chamber. In order to do justice to this distinguished man it is 
 only necessary to portray his true character. He made no pre 
 tensions as a master of oratory. He aimed at no distinction for 
 sharpness in debate. He never, within my recollection, attempted 
 any display on this floor. The plainness and pointedness of his 
 speech was in keeping with the openness and candor of his heart, 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. JONES, OF FLORIDA. 47 
 
 the honesty of whose purposes required no richness of vocabulary 
 to relieve it from the suspicion of insincerity. 
 
 Kind nature, in the bestowal of her gifts, both to animals and 
 men, has ever regarded the wants which their imperfections created. 
 The lion is not gifted with the activity of the deer, but he is armed 
 with a power as well adapted to his protection as the fleetness of the 
 other. The plain, open, unsuspecting heart needs not the polished 
 phrase of oratory to give effect to its convictions. The man whose 
 character is a beacon-light of truth, honor, and integrity, will be felt 
 in the simplest speech, while the artful and cunning deceiver requires 
 all the best power of expression to enable him to convince the world 
 of the honesty of his purposes and the integrity of his principles. 
 
 Need I appeal to the Senate to verify this assertion ? When our 
 departed friend rose in this Chamber, who, even among his politi 
 cal adversaries, ever for a moment questioned the truth and sincerity 
 of his statements? All felt that whatever might be the weight of 
 his argument, it was the emanation of a mind honestly impressed 
 and free from every taint of deception or insincerity. Well do I 
 remember when, during the extra session, he rose in his seat and 
 rebuked this side of the Chamber for what he called our want of 
 dignity in resorting to dilatory motions ; and when reminded by my 
 friend from Kentucky that, on a previous occasion, he was himself 
 an obstructionist by retiring to the cloak-room to avoid a vote, 
 without the slightest hesitation or effort at prevarication he admit 
 ted his delinquency, and said if God would forgive him he would 
 never do so again. Although he took his place in the Republican 
 ranks, and was a true party man, still all could see that he was at 
 times too broad and liberal, too good and kind, too great a lover of 
 his country and his fellow-man to follow any party beyond the 
 bounds of charity, justice, and right. While he was one of those 
 who had drawn his sword for his government when force was to be 
 met with force, yet every one knew that his countrymen of the 
 
48 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 South, in the days of sorrow and misfortune, received nothing but 
 kindness and generosity at his hands. In his intercourse here with 
 men of all parties and from all sections his conduct was always 
 that of a kind, conciliatory spirit, ever considerate of the feelings 
 and honor of others, while he was always watchful and jealous of 
 his own. No man was too humble or lowly to be below his consid 
 eration and kindness, and no man was so high as to be above his 
 contempt and scorn when his conduct merited his reproach. He 
 combined the tenderness and gentleness of a woman with the lofty 
 courage, the high bearing, and stern demeanor of a Roman senator. 
 And while his great heart would melt with charity for the suffer 
 ings of his fellow-man, when the occasion which moved him had 
 passed away, he could resume his place here with immovable firm 
 ness and decision, and exact every formal right that was due to the 
 dignity of his position. In his intercourse with his brother Sena 
 tors no man knew better than he did where to draw the line between 
 overstrained dignity and haughtiness and vulgar familiarity, which 
 often destroys the charm of social life. While never forgetting 
 that he was a Senator and a gentleman, he made it easy for all to 
 approach him and converse with him, and if the sternness of integ 
 rity repelled those only whose motives and purposes were bad, his 
 warm heart and sympathetic nature gave a sure passport to his 
 presence to all who in any way were deserving of recognition. I 
 have not taken the pains to trace this noble man through all the 
 eventful scenes and changes of his life. The occasion would not 
 permit it. I have heard he was of lowly origin, and, like thou 
 sands of others in this great land, owed his fame and fortune, not 
 to a line of illustrious ancestors, but to his own honest exertions 
 and character. Never shall I forget the impression made upon my 
 mind the day I followed his remains to the grave. It seemed that 
 every inhabitant, high and low, of that State he loved and served 
 so well thronged the public highways to pay homage to his mem- 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. JONES, OF FLORIDA. 49 
 
 ory and manifest their grief. The aspect of mourning was neither 
 stately, cold, nor formal. In each face could be seen the sure indi 
 cations of genuine sorrow, and such was the estimate in which he 
 was held that thousands who had never seen him while living 
 lamented his departure as that of a father or bosom friend. Great, 
 indeed, must that man be who, when elevated above his fellow-men 
 and known only to them through his public conduct, impresses the 
 public heart with nothing but sentiments of the warmest love and 
 devotion. I have known greater debaters and logicians than Sen 
 ator BURNSIDE, men who could magnetize senates by the power of 
 speech and stir the passions of the masses at their pleasure, but I 
 have seen them, after the effect of their eloquence had passed away, 
 cold and uninspiring, giving out no moral light, and pointed to as 
 brilliant meteors which illumine and enlighten from afar, but which 
 cannot be approached in safety in consequence of the contagion of 
 their fiery, life-consuming presence. Not so with him we mourn 
 to-day. His high moral bearing was always the same, and whether 
 in the Senate Chamber or the walks of private life, he was pointed 
 to as the same uniform and lofty character whose beauties and good 
 ness were always clearer and brighter the nearer we approached 
 them, infusing warmth, life, and hope into all who surveyed them. 
 Cut down in the prime of his manhood by the unheralded hand of 
 death, it is not for us to question the wisdom or goodness of the 
 Almighty by complaining of His decree. The shortness of the 
 time which must necessarily intervene between our late brother s 
 departure to the realms of immortality and our own will never be 
 perceived on the records of eternity. In the course of nature, stern 
 and inevitable, we must follow him, and should it be the fate of any 
 of us to be called upon to meet death without warning or premoni 
 tion as he was, let us hope that we will be as well prepared to bear 
 the scrutiny and receive the judgment of an all- wise and all-seeing 
 Judge as AMBROSE E. BTTRNSIDE. 
 
 4B 
 
50 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. HALE, of Maine. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT: It would not be fitting for me, in the little 
 time which I shall take, to attempt to speak of the public life and 
 services of General BUKNSIDE. I could add nothing to Senator 
 Anthony s portrayal. 
 
 But, since General BUENSIDE came into the Senate, it has been 
 my good fortune to know him well and to see much of him, and I 
 desire to say a few words in token of the regard which I felt for 
 him living, and the tender memory which I bear for him now that 
 he is gone. 
 
 That memory recalls him as a man who, out of years of activity 
 and sometimes of awful conflict, brought a nature of exceeding 
 purity and sweetness. 
 
 His education was a military one. In his youth he took part in 
 the war of conquest which the Republic waged against Mexico. 
 His active participation in our last and greatest of wars is a part of 
 the history of the country. He was brought face to face with suf 
 fering and pain and death, and must have learned to look upon 
 these as every-day incidents. He beheld, as a near spectator, the 
 most tremendous European conflict of the century. 
 
 But war never roughened nor hardened him. Some of us who 
 never knew him, until the long ease which peace brings after war 
 had set in, found him intrepid and fearless, it is true, as Bunyan s 
 Great-heart, but magnanimous, gentle, and tender as the blameless 
 king at the head of the Round Table. 
 
 Nor did changed fortune or hard fate have power to warp his 
 spirit. In the great war of the rebellion he commanded our first 
 happy and successful expedition, and later his name was associated 
 with an army corps whose fortunes he led, sometimes to the heights 
 of victory, sometimes into the sad valley of defeat. His command 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ALDRICU, OF RHODE ISLAND. 51 
 
 of our greatest army was not fortunate, and the fact that it was 
 imposed on him with no willing consent on his part, and that events 
 compelled him to lay it down after a great disaster, might have 
 embittered a less generous nature. 
 
 In General BURNSIDE S heart no room was ever found for bit 
 terness, or jealousy, or envy. "An unexhausted kindliness glowed 
 like daily sunrise there." 
 
 Side by side with this softer part of character his "strength of 
 spirit" always asserted itself, and made him the most manly and 
 fearless of men. Time and again I have seen him endure a test 
 more to be dreaded by a sensitive nature than the facing of armed 
 men or the fire of converging batteries, the standing alone and 
 maintaining the cause of an absent and unpopular friend when 
 clamorous voices told him too plainly how absolutely he was alone. 
 
 On such a field General BURXSIDE would not even draw off 
 into the refuge of silence. 
 
 He was a friend worth having; and it will be long before men 
 will cease to sigh or women to weep because they "go their ways 
 without him." 
 
 Standing here in the place which he left vacant, I realize how 
 much better we should be if he were still a moving, living form 
 among us; how great was our loss in his removal. 
 
 Address of Mr. ALDRICH, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT : Other Senators, better qualified by long and 
 familiar association during years of common service here, or of com 
 mon peril in the field, have faithfully told the story of General 
 BURNSIDE S life and public services. I cannot hope to add any 
 thing to their graceful words of eulogy and eloquent tributes of 
 affection, and I should not venture to detain the Senate beyond a 
 simple declaration of concurrence in their kindly expressions if the 
 
52 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 obligations of my position did not require that I should confirm the 
 testimony so feelingly and beautifully given by my colleague of the 
 estimation in which Senator BUENSIDE was held by the people of 
 my native State. No man stood higher in the regard of the people 
 of Rhode Island, and the loss of none in all her history has been 
 so universally mourned. His sudden death touched our hearts 
 with sadness and sorrow at a time when all were watching with 
 anxious solicitude at the bedside of our dying Chief Magistrate. 
 
 The dark shadows of impending calamity which then filled every 
 household in the land with gloom deepened the grief which over 
 whelmed our people when the announcement was made that their 
 neighbor had been stricken down. He had been the trusted and 
 familiar friend of all classes, and all felt that they had suffered in 
 his death an irreparable loss. There was something phenomenal in 
 the attachment of our entire community to General BURNSIDE. It 
 was the affection of a people, proud of their history and traditions, 
 clinging with peculiar tenacity to their conservative institutions, 
 slow to change or to give their confidence, for a man who came to 
 them in mature years a stranger from a distant State. To this sou 
 of Indiana, who left behind him the unequaled opportunities for 
 development and the broad fields of usefulness and power of the 
 great West and boldly stemmed the tide of emigration to enter in 
 New England lists already crowded with competitors, they gave 
 abundant evidences of their confidence and freely accorded their 
 highest political honors. No man can say that these distinctions 
 were not fairly won by honorable service. 
 
 It is not necessary that I should recall the familiar facts of his 
 eventful career. As a brave, faithful, and efficient soldier, he de 
 served the gratitude of his countrymen for his important services. 
 It may not be possible for his contemporaries to assign to him the 
 place he will occupy in history as a military commander, but we 
 can say with confidence that no man entered our great conflict with 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. ALDRICH, OF RHODE ISLAND. 53 
 
 a nobler purpose, or was actuated at all times by a more devoted 
 patriotism, or had a keener appreciation of the importance of the 
 duties he was called upon to discharge. The brightness of his 
 military record was never tarnished by exhibitions of petty jealousy, 
 or by unseemly strife for personal preferment. He had courage, a 
 resolute, steadfast determination which was superior to all obstacles, 
 and an unwavering faith in the justice of his cause. His familiarity 
 with the personnel of his command and his painstaking care over 
 everything which would contribute to their convenience and com 
 fort, kept them at all times in sympathy with their commander and 
 his purposes. He never complained of any injustice or neglect, but 
 was always ready to serve whenever and wherever he was ordered. 
 It has been well said by one who knew him well, that he "was 
 never discouraged by disaster or soured by a sense of injury." He 
 never sought to evade the full measure of accountability for his 
 acts and opinions, and his exceptional magnanimity often led him to 
 assume the responsibility for failures and faults properly chargeable 
 to others. 
 
 We find his characteristic honesty of purpose and devotion to 
 duty manifested in his life at the Capital. He did not look 
 upon his position here as an honor to be lightly worn, but as a 
 great public trust, with grave responsibilities. He was ambitious 
 to be a useful servant of the people who had honored him with a 
 seat in the Senate, and was always ready to respond to demands 
 made upon him by his constituents, no matter how exacting they 
 might be. His conclusions as to the line of public duty to be fol 
 lowed were reached not as the result of profound study, but by 
 accepting the promptings of his own generous and manly nature, 
 and these seemed to lead him instinctively to correct decisions. 
 
 We may not claim for him great genius or brilliant achievements 
 as a soldier or statesman. He had neither the arrogant pretensions, 
 the impracticable theories, nor the infirmities of temper which are 
 
54 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNS1DE. 
 
 sometimes accepted as the evidence of genius, but he had an intel 
 ligent comprehension of the important duties of American citizen 
 ship, and a sincere desire and honest intention to advance the inter 
 ests and improve the condition of his fellow-countrymen. No man 
 ever dared to attempt to influence or control his action by appeals 
 to purely selfish motives. He was always sanguine of the success 
 of any cause which he advocated, as he believed in the ultimate 
 supremacy of moral forces and the final triumph of right. 
 
 In emergencies, and whenever uncertain of methods or results, he 
 confidently asked for Divine guidance, with the firmest belief in the 
 efficacy of earnest prayer. His unaffected simplicity of manner, 
 his kindness of heart, and his spirit of broad, catholic charity for 
 the unfortunate and the suffering endeared him to all. 
 
 I should do an injustice to the general s memory if I should fail 
 to allude to his attractive social qualities. These were best under 
 stood and appreciated by the wide circle of friends who were per 
 mitted to enjoy the delightful companionship of his home, with 
 its warmth of welcome and genial intercourse and with its bountiful 
 and gracious hospitality ; but a much wider circle will remember 
 the cordial grasp of the hand, and the kind words with which he 
 invariably greeted those with whom he was brought in contact. 
 
 The hour dedicated to the memory and worth of our dear friend, 
 who was so recently full of vitality and hope, and now has left the 
 scenes of his earthly pleasures and friendships forever, is drawing 
 to a close, and as we speak the final words we realize how powerless 
 is human agency to mitigate our sorrow. 
 
 We may hereafter find much consolation in contemplating the 
 record made to-day of his useful and honorable life. That his 
 good name and example will be cherished by those who knew him 
 best is amply attested by many instances of their devotion to his 
 memory. On the day preceding his funeral half of our population 
 crowded through the portals of the City Hall in Providence, with 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. ALDRICH, OF RHODE ISLAND. 55 
 
 bowed heads and tearful eyes, to look for the last time on his 
 familiar features. His own loved and trusted veterans, the bravest 
 and best of Rhode Island s sons, who tenderly guarded his mortal 
 remains from the hour of his death until the earth closed over 
 them, have taken steps to have his manly presence reproduced in 
 enduring bronze to adorn the busy streets of our principal city. 
 He was lovingly borne, with imposing honors, to his last resting- 
 place by the State of his adoption, who now proudly claims his 
 fame and his ashes as her own. 
 
 I move the adoption of the pending resolutions. 
 
 The PEESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the adoption 
 of the resolutions presented by the senior Senator from Rhode 
 Island [Mr. Anthony]. 
 
 The resolutions were agreed to unanimously ; and (at two o clock 
 and twenty-one minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned. 
 
PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
 IN THE HOUSE or REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 January 23, 1882. 
 
 DEATH OF HON. AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 A message from the Senate, by Mr. Shober, its Acting Secretary, 
 communicated the following resolutions of the Senate on the death 
 of Hon. AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, late a Senator from the State of 
 Rhode Island: 
 
 Resolved, That from an earnest desire to show every mark of respect to the 
 memory of Hon. AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, late a Senator of the United States 
 from the State of Rhode Island, and to manifest the high esteem entertained 
 of his eminent public services and his distinguished patriotism, the business 
 of the Senate be now suspended that his friends and associates may pay fitting 
 tribute to his public and private virtues. 
 
 Resolved, That a widespread and public sorrow on the announcement of his 
 death attested the profound sense of the loss which the whole country has 
 sustained. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions to 
 the House of Representatives. 
 
 Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the Sen 
 ator, the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 Mr. CHACE said : I submit the resolutions which I send to the 
 desk: 
 
 The Clerk read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That the House of Representatives has received with profound 
 sorrow the announcement of the death of Hon. AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE, late a 
 United States Senator from the State of Rhode Island. 
 
 Resolved, That the business of the House be now suspended that opportu 
 nity may be given for fitting tributes to the memory of the deceased and to 
 his eminent public and private virtues; and that as a further mark of respect, 
 the House, at the conclusion of such remarks, shall adjourn. 
 
 57 
 
58 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BUItNSlDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. CHACE, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Recognizing the eminent fitness of Congress placing upon 
 record some memorial of those whose names have been stricken 
 from the roll of either House by the hand of death; in deference 
 to the common sentiment of the people of the State of Rhode Isl 
 and; and impelled also by my own feelings of personal loss, I 
 submit these resolutions. Few men have been more fortunate 
 than was AMBROSE E. BURNSLDE; few more honored. Few have 
 bound to themselves their friends with stronger ties than he; to 
 few have come greater opportunities ; upon few have rested greater 
 responsibilities in life, and rarely has any public man discharged 
 the trusts laid upon him more happily or more successfully. It was 
 my privilege to know Senator BURNSIDE for many years, never 
 without respect and esteem ; of latter time it grew into a sincere 
 feeling of friendship and regard. Widely separated as we were in 
 sentiment and belief in regard to some points, there was always in 
 him a gentle forbearance of feeling, a kindly consideration towards 
 those who differed with him, that could not fail to challenge the 
 warmest response. It is a pleasure, therefore, to emulate the broad 
 charity of which he set us so eminent an example, and in my 
 feeble way pay a few brief words of honest tribute to the many 
 noble qualities of his head and heart. He was a soldier and I 
 opposed to all war; yet we were friends, for well we knew that 
 
 Dimly in the present view 
 We see the truth. 
 
 Much of General BURNSIDE S fame rests upon his military 
 achievements, upon his command of the Ninth Army Corps and of 
 the Army of the Potomac during the rebellion. It will not be 
 expected that I shall speak of his military career. That, I shall 
 pass over, holding, as he knew I did, that war is unjustifiable; that 
 
ADDRESS OF MB. CHACE, OF RHODE ISLAND. 59 
 
 under the teachings of the New Testament it is not right to take 
 human life under any circumstances; that 
 
 Peace nnweaponed conquers every wrong. 
 
 Had BUKNSIDE died under ordinary circumstances the feelings 
 of the people would have found much greater expression. His 
 death carne when the nation was holding sad vigil at the bedside of 
 its stricken President ; while hope was struggling with fear ; while 
 all hearts were deeply touched with the noble courage and heroic 
 patience with which our Chief Magistrate battled for life. The 
 nation was in anguish. In the midst of this season, so full of sor 
 row and grief, while the hands of fifty millions would fain have 
 been put forth to wrestle with the angel of death and avert the 
 impending sorrow, Rhode Island was called upon to part with her 
 favorite son. 
 
 Death found him alone, with no loving hands save those of 
 trusted and faithful servants to soothe his last moments. Although 
 the ties of kinship brought no mourner, his was not a tearless 
 funeral. The State, in the person of its governor, was his chief 
 mourner, and thousands, with unfeigned sorrow, followed his bier 
 to the grave. 
 
 In person he was large of stature, commanding in form, with a 
 face blending manly beauty and rugged strength, surmounted by a 
 noble brow. With a most contagious smile, nature lent a graceful 
 charm to every lineament. "His eye, turned even on empty space, 
 beamed keen with honor." Physically, his was a rare combination 
 of that which is noble and lovable. With the voice of a stentor, 
 that could compass the largest audience, yet finely modulated to the 
 gentlest emotion ; open, frank, and genial in manner ; industrious, 
 patient, and forceful ; with a rare self-control ; bold as a lion, yet 
 gentle as a woman, and kindly thoughtful of others, what won 
 der that men loved him? Rising from an humble position and 
 
60 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 trained for a military life, he attained eminence as a civilian. 
 Thrice elected governor of the State and twice to the United States 
 Senate, honoring himself and his constituents in each position, his 
 life is another illustration of the blessings of our form of govern 
 ment and the great opportunities of American citizenship. 
 
 He was a wise and successful legislator. Making no preten 
 sions to the arts of oratory, he had a straightforward manner of 
 expressing himself, unadorned with rhetorical ornament, which 
 reached the judgment of his hearers. His distinguishing charac 
 teristics were a faithfulness to trusts and an exalted sense of honor. 
 This was nobly shown by his assuming the responsibility of the 
 failure at Fredericksburgh. The defeat of the Union Army had 
 depressed the spirits of the loyal men of the North, encouraging 
 and emboldening those who sought the overthrow of the govern 
 ment to redouble their outcries against the administration that the 
 President was improperly interfering with the command of the 
 Army. The dark shadows around Lincoln s eyes, those furrowed 
 lines on his sad and careworn face, increased in depth. Discontent 
 was heard on every side. It was a time when a little soul would 
 hide itself to escape blame. Not so BURNSIDE. "For the failure 
 I am responsible," wrote he. That was moral heroism. Men who 
 would face physical danger without blanching would hesitate here. 
 Men will brave danger, will patiently endure suffering for the 
 plaudits of the public, but few rise to the noble self-renunciation 
 which he displayed by taking to himself discredit for his country s 
 good. Holding strong convictions on questions of public policy, 
 believing in party organization for the promotion of the public 
 weal, he yet sunk the partisan in the patriot. As a legislator, 
 urging with earnestness such measures as commended themselves 
 to his judgment, the differences of view which are inevitable among 
 men did not with him abate the warmth of personal friendship. 
 
 " He cherished large faith in humankind." He rose above the 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. GRACE, OF RHODE ISLAND. 61 
 
 strife of political campaigns, the contests of party cabal, and with 
 cheerful greeting for opponents and supporters, pressed on with 
 those measures which he believed would promote the material 
 interests of the country, strengthen that which is pure, educate and 
 enlighten the people and lead them up to higher aspirations for the 
 promotion of peace, for the extinguishment of sectionalism, the 
 strengthening of friendship among States and peoples, for a pure 
 administration of justice and the preservation forever of the liber 
 ties of the people. Such was BURNSIDE. Great because he was 
 faithful and true according to his light. 
 
 His strength was as the strength often, 
 Because his heart was pure. 
 
 A warrior who gloried leas in feats of arms than in the substan 
 tial triumphs of the arts of peace. A legislator imbued with a high 
 appreciation of the value of the institutions handed down to us by 
 our fathers ; inspired with a lofty sense of the responsibility we arc 
 under to preserve and transmit them unimpaired to posterity. A 
 faithful friend, a loving husband, the charm of the social circle, cut 
 down at the commencement of a Senatorial term and in the full 
 tide of a splendid manhood. 
 
 Life is not measured by years, but by acts. It is not the rolling 
 seasons, but entries by the recording angel of great and noble 
 deeds; not the daily returning sun, but the repetition of those 
 graceful ministrations which bring light to many hearts, that tale 
 the life of man. Measured by this standard, the life of our friend 
 was a full one. The body has perished as " a fig tree castcth her 
 untimely figs, when shaken of a mighty wind "; but 
 
 All that is real now rcmaincth, 
 Anil fatleth never. 
 
62 LIFE AND CHARACTER Of AMBROSE E. BURNSWE. 
 
 Address of Mr. BROWNE, of Indiana. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER: A few miles distant from my home in a 
 picturesque little county, once a part of the Congressional dis 
 trict I have the honor to represent, may be found the prosperous 
 village of Liberty, and here it was that fifty-eight years ago the 
 sunlight first touched the eyes of the great and good man to whose 
 memory we this day pay tribute. Eastern Indiana, along with its 
 Mortons, its Smiths, its Parkers, its Nobles, its Rarideus, and its 
 Merediths, gave the late Senator from Rhode Island to the Repub 
 lic, and he, too, has gone to join these illustrious men in the "silent 
 halls of death." Our people watched the now dead Senator, and 
 not without solicitude, as he was carving out his great career. 
 They are as proud as are the people of Rhode Island of his 
 achievements, in the field and in the Senate, and they mourn 
 with as deep a sorrow his death. Indiana joins her sister State 
 on this sad occasion, and their tears fall together on the newly- 
 made grave of their heroic son. 
 
 It seems but yesterday that I saw for the-*last time the Senator 
 from Rhode Island. It was in this House, and near the close of 
 the last session of Congress. His figure was as erect then, his eye 
 as bright, his step as elastic, as when a third of a century ago, on 
 the Las Vegas, he charged, with flashing saber, the hostile Apaches, 
 "and swept them before him like chaff." I little thought then that 
 death would strike so soon, but it came; the harp is unstrung; his 
 lips are mute, his eyes sightless, and the heart that was throbbing 
 with warm ambitions is cold and pulseless forever. " But death 
 has nothing terrible in it save what life has made so"; and he had 
 so lived, so loyally performed his duty, that we may hope he now, 
 
 After a rough day of toil, 
 Enjoys a sleep without dreams. 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. BROWNE, OF INDIANA. 63 
 
 With General BURNSIDE death did not end all, for the deeds of 
 a good man live after him. A life well spent reaches forward and 
 influences the ages. The generous, the heroic in man s conduct do 
 not turn to dust nor do they perish in the grave. The good deeds 
 of a man s life are as fadeless as the stars. 
 
 Every noble deed is a step toward heaven. 
 
 Great souls, 
 
 By nature half divine, soar to the stars 
 And hold a near acquaintance with the gods. 
 
 Senator BURNSIDE will live right on in the deeds of gentleness 
 and kindness that made up the web and woof of his life. He will 
 live in what he wrought for liberty; in what he did to make sure 
 the foundation of our republican system of government. 
 
 Time will not permit me to review his checkered and eventful 
 career. I need not do so. His life record is made up ; his fame 
 is safe without panegyric, and the warmest friendship can add little 
 to it, and malice, 
 
 The foulest whelp of sin, 
 can detract nothing from it. 
 
 Death has made no conquest of this conqueror, 
 For now he lives in fame, though not in life. 
 
 Senator BURXSIDE came from a robust Scotch family, and there 
 flowed in his veins the blood of a heroic race. His ancestry might 
 be traced back perhaps to the bloody fields of Bannockburn and 
 Flodden Field, where the sturdy Scotch soldiery made an imperish 
 able record of valor. His parents were born in Scotland, but im 
 migrated to America in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 and settled in South Carolina. They came to Indiana Territory 
 some three years before that State was admitted to the Union, and 
 here in Union County he was born and passed the days of his 
 boyhood. 
 
 Of his youth I know little beyond the fact that his opportuni 
 ties for intellectual training were limited to those placed within his 
 
64 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 reach by the crude educational system of a pioneer people, and that 
 before he attained the age of nineteen he was sufficiently advanced 
 in his studies to be fit for admission to our national military acad 
 emy. Before going to West Point he learned the trade of a tailor, 
 and was engaged in that pursuit. He was but a boy then ; his 
 father had met with financial reverses, and young BURNSIDE was 
 wise enough to accommodate himself to his changed condition, 
 brave enough to confront and grapple misfortune, and strong 
 enough to conquer it. 
 
 Who hath riot known ill-fortune, never knew 
 Himself, or his own virtue. 
 
 A few days since, the learned gentleman now writing his biog 
 raphy gave me the circumstances attending Senator BURNSIDE S 
 appointment to West Point. In 1841 Caleb B. Smith, then a 
 Representative in Congress from Indiana, found him a mere strip 
 ling in a tailor shop at Liberty, plying his trade, and at the same 
 time reading a book on tactics. He found that the youth had an 
 intense desire for military life. Mr. Smith at once recommended 
 his appointment to a cadetship, and in this was joined by the general 
 assembly of Indiana, then in session. As Mr. Smith had bitterly 
 antagonized President Tyler s administration, his effort was unavail 
 ing. Just here a gentleman, who had been Mr. Smith s competitor 
 in the Congressional race, came to the tailor boy s rescue. He had 
 written a series of articles in defense of the administration that so 
 pleased the President that he awarded the patronage of the district 
 to him, and at his suggestion AMBROSE EVERETT BURNSIDE was 
 given an opportunity to gratify his youthful ambition. 
 
 How trivial a circumstance ofttimes changes the current of a life ! 
 Out of what a little germ there sometimes grows a great opportunity ! 
 And say what we may all the past teaches that men cannot be great 
 without a great occasion. Opportunities improved make men 
 opportunities lost unmake them. 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. BROWNE, OF INDIANA. 65 
 
 The incident I have given took the youthful BURNSIDE from 
 the workshop of the village tailor, opened up before him a broader 
 arena in which to fight the life-battle, and make it possible for him 
 to crowd his future with illustrious deeds. But " Heaven from all 
 creatures hides the book of fate." 
 
 The horoscope did not forecast the work he had to do. Before him 
 were fatiguing journeys through the perilous fastnesses of the South 
 west, the hardships of frontier life, the dangers of savage warfare, 
 the horrors of an immense and cruel civil war, the bloody fields of 
 South Mountain, of Antietam, of the Wilderness, Petersburgh, Cold 
 Harbor, Spottsylvania, and Fredericksburg, where thousands upon 
 thousands went down in the storm and agony of angry war. These 
 dangers, these sad and terrible conflicts, these fields of suffering and 
 death, bringing sometimes disaster, sometimes victory, were General 
 BURNSIDE S great occasion ; and here he made his record as a soldier. 
 That record will endure until the events of the most bloody and 
 most sorrowful epoch in the world s annals shall fade from history. 
 
 But, sir, his fame is not alone that of a soldier, for he was three 
 times elected governor of Rhode Island by her people, and twice 
 chosen by the almost unanimous voice of her general assembly to 
 a seat in the Senate of the United States. Few men ever had such 
 a hold on the affections of a people as he had on that of the people 
 of his adopted State. They admired him as a soldier ; they con 
 fided in his wisdom and integrity as a statesman, and, more than 
 all, they loved him as a man. As executive and as Senator he 
 maintained his political beliefs with the courage of conviction, and 
 never faltered in the support of what he thought to be right. 
 
 Sir, his career is too full of great events to be reviewed on an oc 
 casion like this. I will not attempt it. To repeat the story of his 
 life would be to re-write the history of the gallant Ninth Army 
 Corps, of the heroic and battle-scarred Army of the Potomac, and 
 
 indeed of the rebellion itself. 
 SB 
 
66 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 I need not pass in review his campaigns nor fight over his battles. 
 Although the armies he commanded are disbanded now, "their 
 battle-flags furled, their bugles silent/ and thousands of his fellow- 
 soldiers sleep with him in the cold bivouac of the dead, his honor 
 is forever secure, for the memory of his sacrifices for human liberty 
 and the Union of the States is enshrined in the hearts of a patriotic 
 people, and guarded with scrupulous care by the heroes who sur 
 vive him. Men do not read alike a human life, for they see it from 
 different angles. To judge a man impartially is difficult also, because 
 we are too apt to estimate his life in the light of its influence upon 
 our party or personal interests. A point in individual character 
 which strikes a friend as a strong one is unnoticed by the indiffer 
 ent, and is set down by an enemy as a weakness or a crime. 
 
 I can only speak to-day of General BURNSIDE as he appeared to 
 me, and I speak as a personal and political friend. 
 
 He was kindness itself. A more genial, kindly nature I never 
 knew ; and it was as unostentatious as it was kind. Where known 
 he will long be remembered by 
 
 That best portion of a good man s life, 
 His little, nameless, unrecorded acts 
 Of kindness and of love. 
 
 And withal he had the merit of modesty, which imparted strength 
 and beauty to his character and gave color to almost every act of 
 his public and private life. He both suspected and respected him 
 self. At all times he so reverenced himself as not to " bend the 
 pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning." 
 
 In every sphere of Senator BUBNSIDE S life he regarded "the 
 post of duty as the post of honor." He believed when the flag 
 was shot at in Charleston Harbor it was his duty to give his serv 
 ices to the nation that had generously educated him. He believed, . 
 moreover, that the rebellion was a crime, and he did not hesitate to 
 go into the conflict. When, on the 15th day of April, 1861, Gov- 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. BROWNE, OF INDIANA. 67 
 
 ernor Spraguc telegraphed him: "A regiment of Rhode Island 
 troops will go to Washington this week; when can you come on 
 and take command?" he promptly responded, "At once." From 
 that day until the war ended he was a part of it, and his name a 
 part of its history. He was a man of intrepid courage a courage 
 unmixed with insolence or brutality. 
 
 His was not the brutal force 
 Of vulgar heroes, 
 
 for in no sense of the word was he a braggart or a bully. He 
 feared no man but himself. If there was one infirmity in his 
 nature it was the lack of self-confidence. He did a great injustice 
 to his own powers, for he was an infinitely greater and stronger 
 man than he thought himself to be. He weakened himself by his 
 self-distrust, and sometimes failed to win not because he feared 
 his personal safety, but because he was afraid he might put in 
 jeopardy his country and its cause. A thousand instances of his 
 personal heroism might be given, and I am tempted to refer to 
 one. In January, 1862, when the fleet bearing his troops was 
 attempting to make Hatteras Inlet it was struck by a storm which 
 threatened its destruction. Perhaps no more fearful gale ever 
 swept the bosom of the sea. One who was in the boat with him 
 says: 
 
 Bravely \ve breasted on in our little boat, staggering beneath the giant 
 blows of each successive sea, our decks swept fore and aft, and all on board 
 reeling from side to side like drunken men. One figure only stood unblauched, 
 immovable, grasping by the bits, scanning the horizon for traces of his lost 
 ships as we rose on each glittering mass of foam, and that was the square, 
 manly form of General BURNSIBE. 
 
 To face without alarm such a danger, a danger with which one 
 cannot grapple, the terrible rage of a remorseless sea, requires a 
 courage few men possess. Nor was fear with him when the battle 
 was on, when shot rained about him and the bursting shell plowed 
 the ground at his feet. 
 
68 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURN SIDE. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, Senator BURNSIDE had a more sublime hero 
 ism than that which faced an angry sea, or rode down on the ad 
 versary in the charge of the troopers, or stormed the entrenchments 
 through the smoke of musketry and cannon, for he was brave 
 enough to take upon himself the responsibility of his mistakes and 
 his failures. Who can forget his magnanimity after the defeat at 
 Fredericksburg ? He might have imitated the example so fre 
 quently set during the war of throwing the responsibility upon 
 some subordinate. He might well have cast upon the authorities 
 at Washington, where it belonged, a share of the blame for this 
 disaster. " To the brave officers and soldiers," he said, " I owe 
 everything for the failure in the attack I am responsible." 
 Where does this find its parallel ? Who in that day of rivalry, 
 of jealousy among our military chieftains, was capable of a cour 
 age so frank and manly ? 
 
 But, sir, I must pause here. I must content myself with this 
 brief outline of a great man s life. The historian will embalm his 
 deeds of goodness and valor. Future generations will learn from 
 General BURNSIDE S example the lesson of devotion to duty and 
 loyalty to human liberty. 
 
 The statesman and soldier has gone to a rest all undisturbed by 
 the envy, or pride, or hate, or ambition of men, or by the rage and 
 tumult of the battle. No rivalries now molest him. He is beyond 
 reproach or praise the one cannot please nor the other offend ; and 
 here we leave him until the morning of the Everlasting Day 
 breaks upon his grave. 
 
 Heroic spirit, take your rest ! 
 
 You are richer ; we are poorer ; 
 Yet because you have becu with us 
 
 Life is manlier, heaven surer. 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. RICE, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 69 
 
 Address of Mr. RICE, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER : To Rhode Island, the State which honored her 
 self in honoring him, properly belongs the first place in the obse 
 quies of Senator BURNSIDE. 
 
 Indiana, the State of his birth, fitly stands by her side. Massa 
 chusetts, by the love she bore him, by the high honor and respect 
 in which she holds his memory, claims the privilege, almost as 
 a matter of right, of being one in the family group around his 
 premature grave. 
 
 There are thousands of brave men in my district who followed 
 him on the most eventful days of their lives, to whom, ever since, 
 his presence has been a benediction, his hand-clasp with theirs a 
 pledge of mutual love and fealty, who would not pardon me did I 
 not add their tribute and mine to these memorial services. 
 
 BURNSIDE, more than most men, made for himself the position 
 he held in public life. Born in Indiana, he was little more than a 
 sojourner in Rhode Island at the breaking out of the war. Colonel 
 of her first volunteer regiment, he rose rapidly in the service by his 
 own merits. After the war he was made by the State which had 
 adopted him first Governor, then United States Senator, in quick 
 succession. 
 
 Before reaching the prescribed limit of three-score years he died, 
 leaving, I believe, no one in the State in whose veins ran blood 
 kindred with his own. But the day of his funeral was probably 
 the saddest in the annals of Rhode Island. All business was sus 
 pended, all buildings were draped, all the people were in the solemn 
 procession which followed his remains to the grave. There was no 
 division of sentiment, no immunity from the common grief all 
 felt that the most honored citizen, the best beloved man within the 
 limits of the little State, had been removed by death. 
 
70 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Surely this man must have had some rare qualities. He was an 
 exotic from a distant land, his ancestral roots all remote; yet no 
 oak ever stood more firmly in its native soil, than he in the affec 
 tions of that community on the day of his death his kindred all 
 scattered and far away, tens of thousands marked with tearful eyes 
 and saddened hearts the bells that tolled his funeral march. 
 
 What, then, were these qualities that won for him this strong 
 place, this warm love, beyond that granted to most men ? Was he 
 a great orator, a brilliant statesman ? Not at all. Had his military 
 career been such as to dazzle the popular imagination and secure 
 for him these grand obsequies? Other generals associated with him 
 won fame far transcending his. 
 
 Not to brilliant speech, or gifted statesmanship, or martial prow 
 ess can we attribute the wonderful success of his life ; but to the 
 possession, in harmonious symmetry, of those virtues which make 
 the good and true man whom all love and trust. 
 
 Perhaps his most prominent characteristic was his unvarying 
 kindness of heart. His nature overflowed in lavish, open-handed 
 hospitality. Always happy with his friends around him, he was 
 never happier than when his soldiers responded to the invitation of 
 their old commander and pitched their tents upon the pleasant lawn 
 of his sea-side home. His heart was as capacious as his grounds ; 
 it had room for all. Not only his brother Senator, his social ac 
 quaintance, the soldier who had followed his war-worn flag, but the 
 poorest outcast as well, no matter what his color or condition, could 
 not look on his face and fail to know a friend. 
 
 How truly the man within shone out through his physical envi 
 ronment! Who that saw him will ever forget his tall, erect figure; 
 his dignified step; his face beaming with kindly good-nature; the 
 politeness, not cultivated but instinctive, which marked his inter 
 course with all ? Recalling .him thus, we marvel no longer at the 
 affectionate regard in which he was held by all who knew him. 
 
ADDRESS OF ME. EICE, OF MASSACHUSETTS. 71 
 
 His integrity was unquestionable. I do not use the word in its 
 narrow sense of personal incorruptibility, but in its larger signifi 
 cance of moral soundness and purity. His ambition was not in 
 self-seeking, but in well-doing ; therein was his strength. He was 
 undoubtedly pleased by popular favor, but he sought it by no tricks 
 of demagogism. He accepted it and was proud of it as the result 
 and reward of a life spent in faithful service to his fellow-men, but 
 he was incapable of using it for any unworthy purpose. Whatever 
 trust was confided to him was safe in his hands. His honesty was 
 so transparent that it was scarcely noticed or considered by those 
 about him. His character repelled criticism and slander as the per 
 fect mirror repels the foul breath blown against it, itself as stainless 
 as before. This single-hearted integrity involved absolute faithful 
 ness in the discharge of duty. Modest, he distrusted his own ability 
 for the accomplishment of great things, yet never shrank from any 
 responsibilities which his position imposed upon him. His model 
 was the officer who, when asked to storm an almost impregnable 
 position, replied, "I will try," and if the trial was not successful, 
 it was made to the utmost of his ability. 
 
 Such was BURNSIDE always kind, honest, and faithful. His 
 life was marked by no brilliant exploits like the fitful flashes of 
 electric storms, or even like the colors of sunrise and sunset, too 
 bright to last, but was rather like the constant mellow light of a 
 pleasant summer day. Such lives are the healthiest, most useful, 
 most in accord with our institutions. 
 
 Popular education, which BURNSIDE sought to promote, has pre 
 cluded the possibility of individual domination in this republic. 
 The exceptionally great men of past times were developed by the 
 exercise of power, the usurpation of which an educated people will 
 not permit. We shall never produce a Csesar, a Napoleon, or even 
 a Cromwell. We do better. We have our BUENSIDES every 
 where, calm, intelligent, patriotic, never seeking to oppose or divert 
 
72 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 the .great currents of popular progress, but content to watch them, 
 to move with them, and if storm or danger come, at whatever per 
 sonal risk, to mend the breaches or remove the obstructions that the 
 mighty stream may flow on in unchecked majesty and strength. 
 
 It is enough to say of BUENSIDE nothing better need be said 
 of any man courteous gentleman, honest statesman, friend, tender 
 and true, in whatever position, civil, military, or social, for State, 
 for nation, for humanity, he always did what he could. 
 
 Address of Mr. HENDERSON, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER: It was my good fortune to have served under 
 the command of General BURNSIDE for a time during the late war, 
 and to have known him well ; and while I have made no prepara 
 tion to speak on this occasion, yet I feel that I cannot remain silent 
 and allow these proceedings in his memory to pass without at least 
 paying some tribute to the memory of one whom I greatly honored 
 and deeply loved. I followed General BURNSIDE in 1863 over 
 the mountains into the State of Tennessee, and served under his 
 command until after the battle of Knoxville, in November of that 
 year, when he was relieved from the command of the Department 
 of the Ohio at his own request; and it gives me pleasure to say 
 here what I know would find utterance in the heart of every officer 
 and soldier who served under his command, that no braver nor 
 better man ever commanded an army than General BURNSIDE, and 
 no man ever had a kindlier heart than he too kind, I sometimes 
 thought, for strict military discipline; yet he always kept his army 
 well in hand, as I think was attested during the campaign of East 
 Tennessee in 1863. From the time he took command of the Army 
 of the Ohio in the field in person until he was relieved at his own 
 request, he did all for the honor and success of his army and for his 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. HENDERSON, OF ILLINOIS. 73 
 
 country that a brave officer, a skillful commander, and a true patriot 
 could do. His presence always inspired hope and confidence in the 
 hearts of the officers and men who served under him, and I am 
 sure no commanding officer was ever more generally beloved by his 
 army than was General BURSTSIDE. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, General BURNSIDE had a brave heart, a heart so 
 brave that I have sometimes thought he was absolutely insensible 
 to personal danger. But while he had a brave heart, it was as ten 
 der as that of a child, and full of kindness for all men. I do not 
 think an officer or a soldier who served under him, and who is 
 worthy of the name, can be found but will love and cherish his 
 memory as a great soldier and a true patriot. 
 
 He loved and cared for his army ; was anxious for the welfare 
 and comfort of his men, but while he was always considerate for 
 the safety and success of his command, he yet had an earnest and 
 sincere patriotism which led him, when occasion demanded it, to 
 peril everything in the interest of his country. I shall never forget, 
 sir, one occasion, when broken down in health, I felt compelled to 
 offer him my resignation, and called on him in person for that pur 
 pose. He said to me : "I cannot accept your resignation, colonel ; 
 the country needs your services and it needs mine, and we must give 
 all we have to our country. I know the condition of your health, 
 and will take care of you, but cannot accept your resignation." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it was such earnest patriotism, such fidelity to 
 duty, and such kindness of heart as an officer which made every 
 man who served under General BURNSIDE love and honor him. 
 
 It might have been as well for me to have remained silent on 
 this occasion, but if I had done so I know my comrades, the offi 
 cers and men, who served under and with me in the Army of the 
 Ohio during the time General BURNSIDE commanded it, and espe 
 cially during the memorable campaign of East Tennessee in 1863, 
 would think I had not done justice to myself nor to them. I have 
 
74 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 therefore offered these remarks, imperfect as they have been, to 
 give some expression to the sentiment of respect which I, in com 
 mon, as I think, with all my comrades of the Army of the Ohio, 
 entertained for a beloved commander now gone from us forever. 
 Concurring in what has been so eloquently said by other speakers 
 who have preceded me, it will ever be to me a pleasure, while I 
 love my country and the brave and gallant men who saved it, to 
 honor and cherish the memory of General AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 Address of Mr. PETTIBONE, of Tennessee. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER : One by one the soldiers of the Republic who freely 
 periled their lives on many a bloody battle field during the war of 
 the rebellion that this nation might live are passing away ! To-day 
 we mourn the loss of that gallant gentleman and stout soldier, AM 
 BROSE E. BURNSIDE. As the Representative of the first district of 
 Tennessee, a district which sent thousands of its citizens to swell 
 the ranks of the Union army under his command, I cannot refrain 
 from laying a little sprig of mountain laurel on the grave of the 
 deliverer of East Tennessee. 
 
 In the darkest hour of the civil war it was his good fortune to 
 lead the Union forces across the mountains and to bring back to our 
 people the loved banner which their fathers had followed when 
 Andrew Jackson led the Tennessee soldiers on the plains of Chal- 
 mette in the defense of New Orleans. And it is entirely safe to say 
 that among the homes of the Union people of Eastern Tennessee 
 no name is to-day held in dearer remembrance than his. His so 
 journ among them was marked by a flowing courtesy toward all men 
 which softened the asperities of war and made all to speak his praise. 
 His urbanity, his leonine courage, his transparent honesty, his un 
 questioned integrity, his patriotism, which was as broad as the 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. SPOONER, OF RHODE ISLAND. 75 
 
 limits of the Union, stamped him a born leader of men. In my 
 last interview with him he sent his good wishes to his old comrades, 
 and expressed his warm regard for those whom he had succored in 
 the dark days of war. While stoutly maintaining the Union cause 
 he so bore himself that those who had thrown their fortunes into 
 the scale of the Confederacy were compelled to honor the Union 
 general who was tender toward the women and children, the weak 
 and the suffering of every age, class, and condition. Among our 
 mountains hundreds of children have been named for him, for he 
 won the heart-love of our people. But, sir, I speak no more of 
 his renown : 
 
 Whatever record leaps to light, 
 He uever shall bo shamed. 
 
 Address of Mr. SPOONER, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER: The sudden death of Senator BURNSIDE, which 
 has been so properly recognized as a national affliction, overwhelmed 
 the people of Rhode Island in a great common sorrow. 
 
 BURNSIDE was of the foremost of our most eminent men, and 
 held the largest share in the affections of our people. His com 
 manding form was the most familiar figure in our State ; his pres 
 ence in any public gathering always evoked the heartiest greeting ; 
 his name was a " household word," mentioned with respect in every 
 Rhode Island home. Thousands of my fellow-citizens had fol 
 lowed him through the varying fortunes of his campaigns, from 
 Bull Run to Petersburg, and had learned to appreciate his manly 
 virtues where, in fidelity to a common cause, friendships were 
 welded in the fierce fire of battle. We all loved and honored him, 
 not less for the noble and endearing traits of his character than for 
 his illustrious public services and achievements, and mourned his 
 loss as the saddest bereavement. 
 
76 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 We had recognized no indications of the approach of the dread 
 messenger; he came unheralded and unannounced. But the day 
 before his death Senator BUENSIDE was mingling with our people, 
 engaged in his ordinary occupations, in the apparent enjoyment of 
 his usual health, and in the full maturity of his powers. Neither 
 age nor disease had impaired his faculties nor seemingly diminished 
 the vigor of his robust manhood, and a long career of increasing 
 usefulness to the nation and his State seemed open before him. Se 
 cure in the confidence and affections of our people ; adorned with 
 all the dignities and honors which they could bestow; just entering, 
 at their repeated call, upon his second term as United States Sena 
 tor; trusted, honored, and beloved by the nation as few other men 
 ever have been, his future seemed radiant with brilliant promise 
 and honorable possibilities. Yet the insidious destroyer, unsus 
 pected and unrecognized, had crept within the portals of his life ; 
 and even preceding the knowledge of his illness came the shocking 
 tidings, BUENSIDE is dead! 
 
 Although a native of another State, Senator BURNSIDE had long 
 been a citizen of Rhode Island and largely concerned in her aifairs 
 in both private and public capacities. Educated at West Point 
 and serving with gallantry in the United States Army, he had, 
 prior to the war of the rebellion, been a distinguished citizen of 
 our State, and had been identified with and in command of our 
 State militia; and at the outbreak of the war in 1861 was naturally 
 selected as the colonel of our " First Rhode Island," that regiment, 
 composed of the best of our patriotic sons, which, rushing to the 
 defense of the Union cause, was among the first to report for duty 
 at the nation s capital. 
 
 I refrain from unnecessary reference to that great struggle ; for 
 the record and the results, familiar to all, illuminate the pages of 
 our country s history, and live and are perpetuated in our customs 
 and our institutions, in our Constitution and our laws. And I 
 
ADDRESS OF MB. SPOONER, OF RHODE ISLAND. 71 
 
 scarcely need to recall how prominent a part in the historic events 
 of that critical period in our national existence was enacted by 
 our late Senator. 
 
 The war for the Union, involving, as it did, issues of greater 
 magnitude and importance than had ever before been submitted to 
 the arbitrament of arms the supremacy of law, the honor of our 
 flag, the very life of the Republic aroused, as no less cause could, 
 all that earnest patriotism, fidelity, and devotion to country and to 
 duty which were among the stronger traits of BURNSIDE S character. 
 
 His allegiance and his best services during those unhappy years 
 of civil strife were constant, zealous, and unquestioning. 
 
 He fully recognized the necessity of that most positive of mili 
 tary laws, that to the superior belongs command, to the subordinate 
 unhesitating obedience, and cheerfully submitted to its require 
 ments. It was for the government to command his service, as and 
 where it should be required; it was for him to serve, irrespective 
 of personal preferences; and so we find him, all through his mili 
 tary career and in every field of duty, whether as a subordinate or 
 in high or independent command, ever the same conscientious, faith 
 ful patriot-soldier, forgetful of self and regardless of personal 
 advantage, bending his best ability and energy toward the success 
 ful prosecution of the great cause in which he was enlisted. 
 
 I do not wish to be understood to say that BUENSIDE was with 
 out ambition, for I believe he was unusually imbued with that 
 loftiest of all ambitions a determination to perform his duty 
 thoroughly and well ; and that he highly valued the appreciative 
 and just approbation of his fellow-men, and the rank and station 
 which are the insignia of its recognition. It might perhaps have 
 saved the country from years of desolating war, with the attendant 
 expenditure of treasure and of blood, had more of our general 
 officers possessed in like degree a similar unselfish ambition. 
 
 I will not at this time and upon this, perhaps unfitting, occasion 
 
78 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE. 
 
 pause to argue or consider the comparative position which should be 
 assigned to BURNSIDE among the great generals of our times. I 
 apprehend that the calm, dispassionate investigation of history will 
 accord to him the high position to which he is entitled in the tem 
 ple of fame, and will point the moral of his heroic life, his lofty 
 purposes, and of his distinguished and honorable achievements. 
 Yet with the vivid recollections which these thoughts recall of that 
 service which I had the honor to share under his command, I would 
 unfaithfully represent my comrades of the "old Ninth Army 
 Corps" did I fail to testify to the mutual confidence, affection, and 
 esteem which always existed between them and their commanding 
 general. No officer could have been more thoughtful and consid 
 erate for those of every rank and station under his command than 
 was General BURNSIDE; and none, I believe, ever inspired his 
 officers and men with such universal devotion and veneration for 
 their commanding general. I know of no other general in the 
 Union Army who so completely held the unquestioning confidence 
 and affection of his men. To them his presence was an inspira 
 tion; his smile almost a benediction. Wherever they may have 
 served under him, whether in his regiment, his brigade, or his 
 illustrious "old Ninth Army Corps," his surviving comrades, while 
 dropping bitter tears over his grave, recall with just pride the 
 recollection and the record of their service with Major-General 
 BURNSIDE. 
 
 At the conclusion of the war, modestly wearing the honors he 
 had won, General BURNSIDE resumed his residence in Rhode 
 Island ; where, in the following year, he was elected governor of 
 the State, an office which he filled during three successive years, by 
 as many successive elections, to his own honor and the high satis 
 faction of our people. 
 
 In 1874 he was the choice of Rhode Island for United States 
 Senator ; and, having completed his first term with credit and dis- 
 
ADDRESS OF MR. SPOONER, OF RHODE ISLAND. 79 
 
 tinction, and won the just commendation of our State for the 
 earnestness, care, and discrimination with which he performed the 
 duties of his office and discharged every trust committed to his 
 charge, was in 1880 re-elected to his seat in the United States Sen 
 ate, and had scarcely entered upon his second term at the time of 
 his sudden and seemingly untimely death. 
 
 He fell in the ripeness of his fame, adorned with the honors 
 showered upon him by a grateful people, leaving them the legacy 
 of a noble life, an illustrious career, and an honorable example. 
 
 His comrades of the war, the people, his State, and the nation 
 mourn his loss, and will vainly seek to fill the place in their 
 counsels and their hearts left vacant by his death. 
 
 If he had faults or weaknesses, they were in his excessive gener 
 osity, his open-hearted frankness, his amiability of temper, his 
 wonderful unselfishness, his splendid magnanimity. 
 
 I think I may justly assert that his only faults sprang from 
 the development of his illustrious virtues. 
 
 He has gone to his reward ; and I feel sure that the Great Arbiter 
 of the universe will deal tenderly with that great spirit in which 
 those who knew him most intimately could find no guile. 
 
 Although, in proportion to her small population and limited 
 territory, Rhode Island has furnished many names of great men 
 and distinguished heroes to decorate the pages of our country s 
 history, there is no name upon that illustrious roll which she more 
 affectionately and confidently commits to the appreciative consider 
 ation of posterity than that of her favorite and honored son, 
 AMBROSE EVERETT BURNSIDE. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I move the adoption of the resolutions. 
 
 The resolutions were unanimously adopted ; and accordingly (at 
 four o clock and fifteen minutes p. m.) the House adjourned. 
 
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