“Poor Burn?”: The Antietam Conspiracy That Wasn’t

Americans love conspiracy theories. Whether the subject is the assassination of a president, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the nation into World War II, or the tragedy of September 11, considerable segments of the American public have exhibited a remarkable openness to unconventional explanations for historical events that have an element of darkness and mystery about them. No doubt this can in part be attributed to the much-chronicled spirit of paranoia that surrounded the American Revolutionary experience. During that time, a belief that the experiment in virtuous republican government existed in an atmosphere where hostile internal and external forces were constantly seeking its overthrow became a central organizing feature of American political culture. Before the Civil War, this was manifest in, among other things, accusations by Hamiltonian Federalists that Jeffersonian Republicans were agents of French Jacobinism, Jacksonian Democrats’ cries that the Bank of the United States was the agent of a “money power” that sought to enslave the people, and, of course, charges by Republicans during the 1850s that the Slave Power was actively conspiring to transform the republic into a slave empire.

Whatever the cause, the American love of conspiracy has clearly affected the writing of Civil War military history. Indeed, given the fact that the war revolved around questions of loyalty to one’s cause, it would be surprising if this were not the case. And to be sure, there were plenty of instances of conspiratorial activity within Civil War high commands. One need only look to the trials and tribulations Braxton Bragg endured in dealing with the subordinate commanders fate had placed under him in the Army of Tennessee, the machinations of John A. McClernand in 1862 to supplant Ulysses S. Grant as commander of the effort to capture Vicksburg, or the undermining of Ambrose Burnside by subordinates in the Army of the Potomac after Fredericksburg to find evidence of high command intrigue during the Civil War.¹

One conspiracy theory that has gained popularity among students of the Civil War involves the Union high command during the 1862 Maryland campaign. The victim in this case was Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, the man who commanded first a wing, then only the Ninth Corps, in the Army of the Potomac during operations in the Old Line State during the fall of 1862. The perpetrators of the conspiracy included malevolent spirits that took the forms of Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter and Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, but at its center was Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. The first kernels of this theory appeared in the postwar writings of Burnside’s principle subordinate at Antietam, Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, and, as with nearly all topics related to the Maryland campaign, was most fully developed by Antietam Battlefield Board member and battle veteran Ezra Carmen in his massive unpublished study of the campaign.² Its enduring influence is evident in recent discussions of the Union high command during the Maryland campaign in the works of such distinguished scholars such as Stephen W. Sears, James M. McPherson, and William Marvel.³

According to this theory, the Union failed to achieve more during the Maryland campaign in part because Burnside had the misfortune, through no fault of his own, of earning the jealousy of McClellan and wrath of Porter at the outset of the campaign, while at the same time finding himself in one of the most dangerous spots in the Union army—namely, between the notoriously hyper-ambitious Hooker and the personal and professional advancement Hooker believed his due. McClellan, Porter, and Hooker’s resentments resulted, so the theory goes, in Burnside’s sudden and senseless demotion from commander of a two-corps wing to a single corps in the aftermath of the September 14, 1862, Battle of South Mountain. Then, McClellan inexplicably saw to it that the corps belonging to Hooker which had previously been part of Burnside’s wing was sent to the opposite end of the battlefield to fight a completely separate battle at Antietam. As a consequence, Burnside spent...