Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

Three Generations of Warriors

145 Three Generations of Warriors On July 25, 1814, Capt. Sullivan Burbank led a company of the Twenty-first U.S. Infantry against British troops in Canada at Lundy’s Lane during the War of 1812. Fifty years later, his grandson , Capt. Sullivan Wayne “Sullie” Burbank, would lead a company against rebel troops across Saunders Field during the Battle of the Wilderness, in Virginia. In 1861, with civil war looming, Sullie implored his father, Col. Sidney Burbank,232 to help him get a commission in the army. Col. Burbank, an officer in the regular army and an 1829 graduate of West Point, arranged for his son a second lieutenancy in the Second U.S. Cavalry, an elite regiment whose alumni included Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston.233 When the Second Cavalry was reorganized in mid-1861, Sullie transferred to the Fourteenth U.S. Infantry. He made captain in March 1862 and fought at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg , and Gettysburg. In the early afternoon of May 5, 1864, Sullie and the Fourteenth charged rebel positions at one end of Saunders Field, a small clearing in the dense forest due west of Wilderness Tavern. He was wounded, as was his grandfather fifty years earlier at Lundy’s Lane. But his grandfather survived the War of 1812 and went on to retire as a lieutenant colonel after four decades of service. Sullie’s wound proved mortal. He went down in the murderous fire that raked Saunders Field, and he fell into enemy hands. After a month of suffering, he succumbed to his injuries, outliving his grandfather by only two years. Col. Sidney Burbank’s adjutant delivered the news of the son’s death. Recalling the effort he made to get his son a commission, the elder Burbank wrung his hands in guilt-ridden sorrow.234 After 146 dismissing his orderly, Burbank buried his face in his hands. His only son was dead. Sidney Burbank retired as a general and died in 1882, the last of three generations of warriors.235 Capt. Sullivan Wayne Burbank, Company A, Fourteenth U.S. Infantry Carte de visite by Mathew B. Brady (b. ca. 1823, d. 1896) of New York City and Washington, D.C., about 1863 ...