Symposium 2026 Spotlight: “With Friends Like These…”

Welcome back to our spotlight series, highlighting speakers and topics for our upcoming symposium. Over the coming weeks, we will continue previewing of our speaker’s presentations for the 2026 Emerging Civil War Symposium. This week we feature Ryan Quint’s topic:

Many of Ambrose Burnside’s contemporaries described him as one of the most genial people they had ever met. Henry Heth, a West Point roommate and future Confederate opponent, reminisced “A truer friend, a bigger-hearted man, never lived than Ambrose E. Burnside.” But among Burnside’s gregarious personality, one person has loomed large as his foil and critic: Joseph Hooker.

The two men started on easy enough footing, but their command relationship began to sour amidst the Maryland Campaign of 1862. By November, after Burnside had been offered command of the army twice, and turned it down twice, he faced an ultimatum: either take command or Hooker would get the offer instead. Burnside, still harboring doubts of his capabilities but now staring at the prospect of having to report to Hooker, accepted the command. Amidst the Fredericksburg Campaign and the disastrous outcome that followed, Burnside and Hooker bickered, quarreled, and complained of one another to any who would listen.

This festering relationship deteriorated so badly that by late January 1863, Burnside even threatened to hang Hooker. Examining the critical movements and decisions of late 1862, early 1863, this talk analyzes that sometimes in the Civil War, a general’s worst opponent wore the same color uniform.

For more information on the 2026 Emerging Civil War Symposium and to purchase tickets, click here.