AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE (1824-1881) Union major general who is known for the disastrous charges made at Fredericksburg in 1862, and the nicknaming of distinctive facial hair. Superb content A.L.S. "A. E. Burnside", 2pp. 4to., Cincinnati, Apr. 6, 1863, to Corydon Beckwith at the start of an incredible Union-Confederate dispute over land which ended up in the Supreme Court twenty-eight years later! The suit involved the title to real estate with considerable value in Chicago, which belonged to Union Col. Julius W. Kingsbury who died in 1856. The property was then conferred to his widow and their two children, Henry W. Kingsbury, a colonel in the Union army, and his sister Mary, who was married to Confederate Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner. At the start of the war, Mary and Buckner conferred their share of the property to Henry, who later died at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862. In Henry's will, he named Burnside as one of the executors of his estate. In 1870, Mrs. Buckner initiated a suit against Burnside and the other executors of the estate, who included Eva Taylor, Kingsbury's widow, on behalf of her grandson, who Taylor gave birth to on December 16, 1862, after Kingsbury's death. The suit claimed that the estate should be passed to the infant, not to Burnside et alia, and further, that Burnside et alia had committed fraud to obtain the property. In the midst of the raging war, the transfer of significant property in Union territory to the descendent of a Confederate colonel was not met well. The suit raged on for years, until Mary Buckner's death in 1877, when her daughter Lily was substituted in her place as co-plaintiff. After several appeals, the course made it to the Supreme Court, which eventually upheld the original decision that Burnside et alia had not committed fraud in securing the estate on behalf of Henry Kingsbury. Burnside's letter is to Beckwith, named as executor of the estate for Kingsbury's infant son, and refuses to transfer the property. In part: "...I can give no proof, but my own word, that if the property is conveyed to me that I will convoy it directly to the son of the late Col. Kingsbury subject of him to his indebtedness to me...You know why I am so anxious about this, and I hope you do not feel that I would do anything more to aid a man in arms against his government than you would. Since he went south I have furnished money to the late Col. Kingsbury and mother, but not one single cent directly or indirectly has gone to Genl. Buckner , his wife or family and it would be impossible that any part of this property could go to him unless the boy should give it to him after he becomes of age, which is not likely. You will remember that the mortgage was closed when both Col. Kingsbury and myself were in the field... ". Moderate folds, otherwise very good. $600-800