Henry Lawrence Burnett (December 26, 1838 – January 4, 1916) was an American lawyer and, after serving as a major in the Cavalry Corps (Union Army), he was a colonel and Judge Advocate in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

[2] His paternal grandfather, Samuel Burnett, a native of Morristown, New Jersey, was well educated and at one time was prominent and influential.

He had a considerable fortune, but lost most of his property during the Revolutionary War, along with Robert Morris,[2] and emigrated west to Ohio around 1798.

[5] In 1861 when the Civil War broke out, Burnett joined the 2nd Ohio Cavalry, where he rose to the rank of major in 1862.

In this capacity he commanded 400 cavalry soldiers during an operation into the Oklahoma Territory, and defended the actions of a colonel who placed General James Blunt under arrest.

[5] After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Burnett was called upon by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to be an Assistant Judge Advocate General.

The second was to assassinate Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward to throw the government into chaos.

[2] It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from the body of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Senator John Sherman and Holt asked for him to be appointed a brevet brigadier general, which he accepted in May 1866.

[16][2] He was notably involved in representing the English bondholders in the Emma Silver Mine litigation.

Together, they were the parents of:[5] After his first wife's death in 1864, he married Sarah Gibson Lansing (1846–1877), the daughter of Brig.

Her paternal grandfather was Barent Bleecker Lansing and her maternal grandparents were Henry Bicker Gibson (1783–1863), banker and president of the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad, and one of the richest men in Western New York, and Sarah (née Sherman) Gibson (herself the aunt of William Watts Sherman).

He also served as past president of the Ohio Society of New York, for four years,[2] and the Loyal Legion.