Kathryn Olivarius on “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: Lincoln’s Death and a Nation’s Grief”

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, just five days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln’s death came at a moment when the nation desperately needed to make sense of catastrophic loss. Over 750,000 Americans had died in four years of civil war—fathers, sons, brothers gone. Communities were shattered. The South lay in ruins. And yet there had been no national ritual to process this bloodletting, no collective ceremony to mark what had been sacrificed or why. Lincoln’s assassination changed that. As his body traveled 1,700 miles by funeral train from Washington to Springfield, millions of Americans lined the tracks and crowded into cities to participate in elaborate public rituals of grief. Black mourners, many recently freed from slavery, served as pallbearers. Immigrant societies, craft guilds, and religious groups marched in processions. The funeral became a rehearsal for democracy itself—a chance for a fractured nation to grieve together, to consecrate the war’s meaning, and to imagine reunion. This talk explores how Lincoln’s death was transformed into a sacred symbol of national sacrifice, and how his funeral allowed Americans to mourn their collective personal loss.

Kathryn Olivarius is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (2022). The book won multiple awards, including best first book prizes from the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, as well as the Humanities Book of the Year Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. She has taught Civil War and Reconstruction for a decade and lives in Palo Alto.

Bill Rodenspiel on “Four Civil War Rifles”

Bill Rodenspiel will display and discuss four Civil War rifles:

• U.S. Springfield Model 1863 Rifle, Remington Contract
• Enfield P53-Tower 1862 BSAT
• Enfield 1856, Parker-Hale Reproduction
• Spencer Rifle Model 1860

Bill Rodenspiel has always had an interest in the Civil War. He has been a member of the Peninsula Civil War Round Table (PCWRT) for six months. He grew up in San Francisco, joined the Marine Corps in 1967, and became a police officer in 1982. He worked various assignments as a police sergeant and retired after 31 years of service. He is married, has three grown children and two grandsons, and lives in Redwood City.

Magnus Akerblom on “A Soldier’s Christmas”

Just after Christmas in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies set up camp within shouting distance of one another. To raise their spirits they began a combative volley of patriotic tunes: “Yankee Doodle” drowned out by “Dixie.” A bittersweet moment a day before the battle of Stones River.

Magnus Akerblom was born in Sweden and immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1957. They lived in Lake County for three years and then moved to San Mateo. After graduating from Burlingame High School, Magnus served three years in the U.S. Army. He attended the College of San Mateo where after taking a class in U.S. history, Magnus developed a life long interest in the Civil War.

One of Magnus’s favorite pastimes is off road wheeling in his Jeep. He belongs to the Esprit De Four club, and conducts a class on how to drive off road.

Magnus has been a member of the Peninsula Civil War Round Table for three years.

Mark Lindberg on “America’s Entry into World War I”

The upcoming program on America’s entry into World War I will explore the critical events and dynamics surrounding the United States’ involvement in the global conflict. It will begin by examining the events leading up to the war, setting the stage for the complex international tensions that drew the U.S. into the fray. The presentation will then delve into the specific circumstances surrounding America’s entry, highlighting the pivotal moment in 1917 during President Woodrow Wilson’s second term when the U.S. officially joined the conflict. Attendees will learn about the initial state of the U.S. military, its limited capacity at the outset, and the massive expansion that followed to meet the demands of the war. The program will also cover the decisive impact of the U.S. arrival in early 1918, which shifted the momentum toward the Allies, culminating in victory within six months, accompanied by striking battlefield photos from Mark’s 2015 WWI Tour. Finally, the presentation will reflect on the lessons learned from the war and its profound effects on the post-war world, offering insights into how this conflict reshaped global history.

Mark Lindberg grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota where he obtained his Private Pilot’s license on his 18th Birthday while working summers driving a Redi Mix truck for his father’s local contracting company. After obtaining additional aviation ratings, Mark worked as a Flight Instructor while attending the University of North Dakota and graduating in Mechanical Engineering.

Upon graduation in Mechanical Engineering, Mark spent 5 months of training in La Crosse, Wisconsin in commercial air conditioning equipment sales and was then transferred to the Bay Area. During the first several years in the Bay Area, Mark attended the evening MBA program at Santa Clara University graduating in 1976 in Finance.

Although regularly visiting friends and relatives in North Dakota, the weather convinced Mark to remain in California. In May of 1977, Mark flew to England on an airline, rented a Cessna-150(G-BBJW), and celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Lindbergh’s 1927 flight to Paris with a flight from Biggen Hill, UK to Le Bourget airport in Paris.

His career included both commercia HVAC, Real Estate acquisitions and investing along with part time flight instruction. In 2015, Mark received the FAA “Wright Brothers Master Pilot” Award for 50 years of flying without an accident or violation. Mark is a 30-year member and past President of the Kiwanis Club of Mountain View, a 15-year member of the Mounted Patrol of San Mateo County, and a 5-year volunteer at the Wings of History Museum in San Martin, CA. He enjoys golf, horseback riding, historical travel, and photography while writing and speaking on a variety of subjects. Website: marklindberg.com.

Tonya McQuade on “Missouri in the Civil War”

Did you know that many people actually believe the Civil War started in Missouri? Missouri was a state torn apart by political disagreements and violence even before the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. While the Missouri Compromise of 1820 helped to postpone the Civil War for four decades, the Platte Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott case, and the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars—all of which played out here—added fuel to the fire. Some of the war’s first blood spilled on Missouri’s soil, and 42% of the battles occurred here during the first year of the war. Missouri even found itself with two competing governments: one supporting the Union; the other, the Confederacy.

Overall, Missouri suffered more than 1000 engagements on its soil. Many of those involved guerrilla warfare—including the Centralia Massacre and Battle of Centralia, which occurred September 27, 1864. As it turns out, this month’s speaker discovered she has family ties to Centralia on both the Union and Confederate sides.

In this talk, author Tonya Graham McQuade—whose family roots go deep in Missouri—will discuss Missouri’s interesting Civil War history and share excerpts from her book, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri, 1862–1865. The book includes fifty previously unpublished Civil War letters written by two of her ancestors and explains the context in which these two Missouri soldiers and their families found themselves living, both before and during the Civil War, as they watched discord, destruction, and bloodshed erupt all around them.

Originally from Tennessee and Indiana, Hale and Petree each had relatives who fought and died on both sides of the war. Their letters provide vivid details and unique perspectives into their lives and experiences during the war. Tonya will explain how this book came about, read some excerpts from the letters, and show some related maps, family trees, and photos. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Tonya Graham McQuade is the author of A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri, 1862-65, and is a contributing writer to the Emerging Civil War website. She has a love for both history and historical fiction and a passion for writing which she plans to continue pursuing. Last October she went on a book tour in Missouri to discuss her book at many of its relevant sites, and she has some related historical fiction novels she plans to work on now that she has retired—after 33 years—from teaching English at Los Gatos High School.

Tonya is the great-great-great granddaughter of James Callaway Hale, who wrote forty of the letters in her book. Hale’s daughter Mary Ann married the brother of Benjamin Petree, who wrote the other ten letters. In A State Divided, Tonya tells the story of these two Missouri soldiers as they march and drill with their regiments, avoid several close calls with guerrillas and enemy troops, witness the buildup to the Vicksburg Campaign, get an in-depth look at wartime St. Louis, overcome illness, trek with Sherman through the Carolinas, ponder the devastation they encounter, celebrate victory in Washington, D.C., and spend a lot of time sitting around, longing to be home, writing letters to their families.

Tonya lives in San Jose, California. She is an active member of Emerging Civil War, South Bay Civil War Round Table, South Bay Writers/California Writers Club, National League of American Pen Women, and Poetry Center San Jose. You can learn more about Tonya on her website at tonyagrahammcquade.com, as well as find photos related to her book and to her research trips to Missouri. You can also find links to her Chasing History and Emerging Civil War blog posts, her poetry and photography, and her social media sites.

Join us at Harry’s Hofbrau in Redwood City on Tuesday, September 16. Harry’s opens at 11 am for cafeteria style lunch; our meeting will start promptly at 12 noon. See the MEETING INFO menu item for directions. This month’s topic is

Alice Mansel on “Benito Juarez and Lincoln”

How did a poor orphaned Oaxacan indian, Benito Juarez, become the Mexican President? Why did New York financiers give him cash during the US Civil War to push European powers out of Mexico? The story starts with Juarez working as a houseboy in the home of a bookbinder who was a lay Franciscan brother, how he became a lawyer, and ends with Lincoln signing a document about Alta California’s Franciscan missions seized illegally by Americans.

Alice Mansell is a business owner and lawyer who majored in physical sciences and history in college.

Wayne Padgett on “Grierson’s Raid”

The talk will be on Grierson’s raid through Mississippi from Tennessee to Baton Rouge. Wayne will go into the details of the actual raid, then contrast it with the John Ford 1959 film on the same subject entitled The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne. Wayne will describe Ford’s filming characteristics; i.e., he liked to be on location instead of a studio sound stage.

Wayne Padgett is a native San Franciscan graduating from Lincoln H.S.

After naval service as a quartermaster on a destroyer escort, he graduated from Sacramento State College with a degree in law enforcement. After which, he was a special agent with NCIS, then U.S. Treasury Internal Security Division, and finally U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General retiring in 1990. Concurrent with this, he entered the U.S. Coast Guard reserve retiring as a Lieut. Commander.

His interest in the Civil War has been lifelong, having two great grandfathers and a great-great grandfather who served in the war, all in one South Carolina regiment—specifically the 2nd S.C. Artillery.

Wayne joined the San Francisco CWRT when a friend said that they needed a few more bodies in order to secure a private meeting room at the Irish Cultural Center in S.F. He attended, joined, and eventually served as president for several terms. Upon the demise of the S.F. CWRT, he joined the Peninsula CWRT.