The question of his sideburns is a chicken?/egg? conundrum

Civil war (General?) Ambrose Burnsides.

I'll let that marinate for a sec:

Did he cultivate those sideburns to love up to the name, or did the name predestine him to have beasting sideburns?

Those sideburns have their own microclimate! Guy walks down the street with sideburns like that, you know he's not afraid of anything. 

Fact IS often stranger than fiction. I grinned like a possum when I saw this fellow. Then again, perhaps he was compensating to the sparse hair in the upward-area, the Chevy Corvette not yet having been invented?