Tonya McQuade on “Mary Brown, the Wife of John Brown”

What is a wife to do after her husband is hanged for treason?

Much has been written about the abolitionist John Brown—his role in the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars and his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry. His prophetic dying words foretold the bloodshed of the Civil War, and his hanging outside Charles Town, Virginia, followed by his burial in North Elba, New York, made national headlines and drew large crowds.

Far less attention has been given to John Brown’s wife, Mary, and how she and their surviving children rebuilt their lives in the years after his death. How many people know, for example, that Mary and several of her children moved to California in 1864 and eventually settled in Saratoga, on the western edge of Santa Clara County?

It was in Saratoga that Mary Brown spent the final years of her life. She now rests with sixteen other family members at Madronia Cemetery—thousands of miles from where her husband’s body “lies a-mouldering” in North Elba, New York.

Join us to learn more about Mary Brown’s later life, her California connections, and her family’s West Coast legacy.

Tonya McQuade is an author, educator, speaker, and retired high school English teacher. She is a passionate lover of history, travel, and nature. She and her husband frequently visit museums, state and national parks, and historical sites, and she enjoys reading historical texts and primary source documents.

Often, her reading of historical fiction sparks a deeper dive into the real people and events behind the stories, leading her to new discoveries and areas of interest.

After acquiring 50 family Civil War letters, Tonya began intensive research into the American Civil War in Missouri. She blogs about her writing journey and has written multiple articles for the Emerging Civil War website, including two that focus on Mary Brown and her family’s move to California.

Her book, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri (2024), weaves together those family letters with historical commentary. It also explores John Brown’s role in the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars and his prophetic words about the coming Civil War before his execution for treason following the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Tonya is a member of the South Bay Civil War Round Table, South Bay Writers, Poetry Center San Jose, and the National League of American Pen Women. She earned B.A. degrees in English and Communication Studies, along with her Single Subject Teaching Credential in English, from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She later received her M.A. in Educational Leadership from San Jose State University.

You can learn more about Tonya on her website: tonyagrahammcquade.com, including a full listing of her Emerging Civil War articles.

Kristin Patterson on “The Funding of the Gettysburg National Cemetery”

Everyone familiar with the American Civil War is aware of the pivotal encounter between Union and Confederate forces that occurred July 1–3, 1863, just outside the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This was one of the bloodiest battles involving American soldier casualties from both sides. Most people are also familiar with the “Gettysburg Address,” given by President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. But few people know the specifics about how this historic cemetery was financed. The talk will explain who organized the effort and who ultimately paid for the construction.

Kristin Patterson, who was born and raised in Wisconsin, started collecting postage stamps when she was 10. For the past 27 years, she has focused on U.S. Civil War tax stamps and documents with revenue stamps. She has been very active in the philatelic community, serving four terms as President of the Sequoia Stamp Club, 20 years as Chair of the PENPEX Stamp Show (www.penpex.org), and on many other philatelic boards.

Kristin has authored two books. In 2003, she self-published It’s a Wrap! U.S. Revenue Stamps Used on Playing Cards, 1862–1883. This colorfully illustrated book highlights fifteen U.S. playing card manufacturers. In 2010, she published her second book, WESTPEX – The First 50 Years, about the most successful stamp show in the U.S.

Kristin has also written many articles for philatelic journals, including “The Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg,” which discusses how the Gettysburg Cemetery came to be and how the Union funded the effort.

Mark Costin on “Battle of Cerro Gordo – Training Ground for the Civil War”

This talk explores the 1847 Battle of Cerro Gordo, where American forces under General Winfield Scott executed a brilliant flanking maneuver to defeat a much larger Mexican army commanded by General Santa Anna.

The battle proved to be an important training ground for the American Civil War. Many officers who fought at Cerro Gordo later became prominent generals on both sides of the conflict. Special attention will be given to the critical actions of a young Captain Robert E. Lee and other familiar names from the Civil War who played key roles in securing this decisive American victory.

Mark Costin is a recently retired engineer living in Sunnyvale, California. He spent his career working on functional safety for automated and autonomous vehicles. A longtime history enthusiast, Mark now has more time to devote to his hobby.

He holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, an M.Eng. from McMaster University, and a B.Eng. from McGill University.

The April 28th meeting at Jack’s restaurant was replaced by the following event at the Saratoga Senior Center.

High School Essay Contest

Objective: Encourage current high school students to develop an interest in the American Civil War and explore its lasting lessons that continue to shape America today.

Prizes: Monetary awards will be given to the winners.

High School Essay Contest Event

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Location: Saratoga Senior Center
Address: 9655 Allendale Ave, Saratoga, CA

Event Schedule

• 6:30 pm – 6:45 pm — Setup & Logistics
• 6:45 pm – 7:00 pm — Gathering & Refreshments
• 7:00 pm – 7:15 pm — SBCWRT Welcome and Brief Overview of the Organization
• 7:15 pm – 8:00 pm — Essay Contest Presentations, Winner Selection, Quiz, Social Gathering, and Adjournment

Ron Vaughan on “John Pelham, Confederate Cavalry Artilleryman” and “Tyree Bell, Confederate General”

Kirstein Ta on “Ars Moriendi – The Good Death”

Dying far from home and loved ones was a harsh reality that soldiers had to face. Many turned to comrades, religious leaders, nurses, or doctors to help them facilitate “a good death”—a death reflective of character and legacy, based on faith, repentance, and acceptance of God’s will.

“Civil War soldiers were, in fact, better prepared to die than to kill, for they lived in a culture that offered many lessons in how life should end. But these lessons had to be adapted to the dramatically changed circumstances of the war. Soldiers and their families struggled in a variety of ways to mitigate the cruel realities and to construct a good death amid chaos.” —Drew Gilpin Faust

Kirstein Hansen-Ta is a new student of the Civil War. In July 2024, she inherited ten six-inch binders containing her family history, dating as far back as 1630 to the present day. As incredible as all this history is, she found none as fascinating as her family’s experiences during the Civil War. Several men on both sides of her family fought for the Confederacy, including her second great-grandfather and a number of uncles. She is happy to report that, with the exception of one, they all returned home.

Among the hundreds of pages in these binders, Kirstein came across what she considers the most valuable: four typewritten pages of a letter from an uncle describing all three of his older brothers and their time in the Confederate army. Additionally, he describes what life was like for the family during the Civil War. After reading these stories, Kirstein realized that the most intriguing part of the Civil War wasn’t necessarily the battles or the politics, but rather the people who lived through it.

Wanting to learn more about the Civil War, Kirstein discovered the website for the South Bay Civil War Round Table and officially became a member in October 2024. She looks forward to learning more about this significant time in our country’s history.

Alan Sissenwein on “The Checkered Civil War Career of Edwin Vose Sumner”

History has not always been kind to Maj. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner, the Civil War’s oldest corps commander. Born in Massachusetts in 1797, he had over four decades of military service behind him—with much combat experience—when the South seceded. In 1862, he was assigned to command the 2nd Corps in the Army of the Potomac, a position that some historians believe was beyond his capacity. Later that year, at the start of the Fredericksburg campaign, he took charge of the Right Grand Division, consisting of the 2nd and 9th Corps along with two cavalry brigades.

Sumner’s critics cite his performance at the Battle of Antietam as proof of his ineptitude. There, he led one of his divisions into the West Woods, where a Confederate counterattack inflicted over 900 casualties and sent the Federals reeling. Sumner’s culpability in this fiasco remains a source of debate, but the incident was unquestionably the worst moment of his military career.

Whatever Sumner’s limitations, his Civil War record also included successes. The general can be credited with averting disaster on at least two occasions. At the Battle of Fair Oaks, Sumner was ordered to cross the flooding Chickahominy River and support the isolated 3rd Corps, which was being hard-pressed by a Confederate attack. Ignoring warnings that the river had become impassable, Sumner and the 2nd Corps crossed the waterway over a pair of rickety bridges, one of which was soon destroyed by the surging current while the other was in danger of being swept away. Remarkably, they managed to reach the fighting in time to save the 3rd Corps from destruction. Six months later, at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Sumner staved off a potentially larger catastrophe when he dissuaded Ambrose Burnside from renewing his assaults against Marye’s Heights. This talk will examine Sumner’s personality and generalship, showing how they influenced the war for both good and ill.

Alan Sissenwein has been a member of the South Bay Civil War Round Table since 1997 and currently serves as its vice president. A professional writer, he holds a bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley and a master’s in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He is currently writing the second draft of a book on the Battle of Fredericksburg.

David Hsueh on “Requiem for Innocence: Destruction of Nature and Animals in the Civil War”

Five days after the bloodiest single day in American history at Antietam, Union XII Corps acting commander Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams rode across the devastated battlefield. The ground was still littered with corpses, and the stench of decay hung in the air. That evening, in a letter home to his daughter, Williams struggled to describe the scenes he had witnessed. One image, however, refused to leave him:

“The number of dead horses was high. They lay, like the men, in all attitudes. One beautiful milk-white animal had died in so graceful a position that I wished for its photograph. Its legs were doubled under, and its arched neck gracefully turned to one side, as if looking back to the ball hole in its side. Until you got to it, it was hard to believe the horse was dead.”

Unbeknownst to Williams, three days earlier, on September 19, the photographer Alexander Gardner had encountered the very same animal. He captured it in a haunting image later published in his Photographic Sketch Book of the War, titled “Confederate Colonel and Horse, Both Killed at the Battle of Antietam.” Williams’ words and Gardner’s lens together preserved the same tragic scene: an animal of striking beauty transformed into a casualty of war. Once overlooked, the photograph has, in recent decades, gained recognition as a powerful emblem of Antietam and of the Civil War itself, embodying not only the vast human slaughter but also the silent suffering of the animals drawn into the conflict.

This talk explores the wider devastation of the natural world during the Civil War: the destruction of landscapes, the slaughter of horses on the battlefield, and the displacement of other wildlife. It portrays the conflict not only as a human tragedy but also as an ecological catastrophe—a wound inflicted upon both creation and the divine. Its aim is to illuminate a different dimension of wartime destruction: the suffering borne by those who could not speak for themselves.

David Hsueh is a fourth-year political science student at the University of California, Berkeley. An avid history enthusiast since kindergarten, his first introduction to the American Civil War came through reading about President Lincoln. His true passion for the war began after his first viewing of the movie Gettysburg and his subsequent visits to the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields seven years ago, at age 11. His main interests in the Civil War center on leadership decisions at the brigade-to-army level and on human-interest stories—both of generals and of the common soldier. A cinephile and film lover, he drew inspiration for the themes and topic of this talk from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar.

Mark Costin on “The Civil War Campaigns Against the Apache and the Navaho”

At the conclusion of the Civil War New Mexico campaign, the victorious Union appointed James Henry Carleton as commander of the Department of New Mexico. Carleton considered the local Native American tribes, the Apache and Navajo, grave threats and pursued a relentless campaign against them. This talk describes these little-known campaigns, which had severe consequences for the Native Americans in the West.

Mark Costin is an engineer living in Sunnyvale, California, recently retired from working on functional safety for automated and autonomous vehicles. A longtime history enthusiast, Mark now has more time to devote to his hobby. He holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, an M.Eng. from McMaster University, and a B.Eng. from McGill University.

Jim Rhetta on “Would England Have Recognized the South?”

A common belief among Civil War historians is that England was frequently inclined toward diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy. This belief is supported by the view that a shortage of cotton nearly drove England to recognize the South to secure cotton supplies for economic stability and employment in the cotton industry. However, the key missing requirement for diplomatic recognition was a decisive Confederate battlefield victory to convince England that the Confederacy was a militarily viable nation.

Closer evaluations of this issue are often lacking in U.S. publications, with familiar beliefs repeated across generations of readers. This presentation will examine British decision-makers, influencers, foreign policy, and political processes to uncover the truth about England’s intentions regarding recognition of the Confederacy.

Jim Rhetta retired from Lockheed Corporation and also retired as a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, serving in the Intelligence Community. In both careers, he monitored, analyzed, and reported on global conflicts and crises for the Department of Defense. His roles required him to write and present daily intelligence briefings, threat assessments, and weekly activity reports. He authored classified books on foreign air defense threats and orders of battle. He continues to monitor current events and historical subjects for their impact on society today.