Meeting of Thursday, October 9, 2025, 7:15pm ET

Alex Rossino on “Lee’s Army in Maryland: A New Perspective on the Campaign of September 1862”

 Most students of the Civil War believe the story of Robert E. Lee’s 1862 Maryland Campaign is complete, and that new studies must rely on interpretations long since accepted and understood. But what if this is not the case? What if the histories previously written about the first major Confederate operation north of the Potomac River missed key sources, proceeded from mistaken readings of the evidence, or were influenced by Lost Cause ideology? Dr. Alexander Rossino demonstrates that these types of distortions continue to shape modern understanding of the campaign and offers suggestions for how to correct them, developing in the process a new understanding of what General Lee hoped to accomplish in September 1862.

Dr. Alexander Rossino is an independent historian. He earned Master’s and Doctoral degrees in History at Syracuse University, where he taught for two years, before working as a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He is an expert on the 1862 Maryland Campaign and the author of Their Maryland: The Army of Northern Virginia from the Potomac Crossing to Sharpsburg in September 1862; The Tale Untwisted: General George B. McClellan, The Maryland Campaign, and the Discovery of Lee’s Lost Orders (with Gene Thorp); and Calamity at Frederick: Robert E. Lee, Special Orders No. 191, and Confederate Misfortune on the Road to Antietam.

Meeting of Thursday, September 11, 2025, 7:15pm ET

The October 22, 1777, battle at Fort Mercer (aka Red Bank) New Jersey is rather overlooked in both NJ and national Revolutionary War history.  The Red Bank Battlefield Historical Park in National Park, NJ is looking to increase its visibility by partnering with the American Battlefield Trust to improve the park’s interpretation signage and overall exposure.

Erik Mollenhauer and Old Baldy member Ed Komczyk are involved in a campaign to improve the interpretation and increase the recognition of the battlefield. This was the site of one of the fiercest and bloodiest small battles of the war and the only battle the Americans won during the entire Philadelphia campaign. The battle occurred shortly after the American victory at Saratoga. Ft. Mercer never received proper recognition since no well-known commanders were involved on the battlefield. Erik and Ed’s group hopes to rectify this situation and gain the support of the American Battlefield Trust and the Gloucester County Board of Commissioners.

Erik Mollenhauer’s early career began as a secondary science teacher.  During that time he received state and national teaching awards, including one from the White House. In 1990, Erik became a teacher trainer and program developer. Among his projects, he developed a program that took teachers to Russia and eight other countries. In 2001, he developed a project that brought the monarch butterfly story to schools across the U.S. and Canada.

Erik has presented talks on a wide variety of topics including “Secrets of the Night Sky”, “The Hidden Life of Streams”, “Fossil Legends of Indigenous America” and more. His latest project is a deep dive into the history of Gloucester County’s Red Bank Battlefield. The truth of what happened there on Oct 22, 1777 is bigger, more surprising and inspiring than almost anyone knows.

Meeting of Thursday, August 14, 2025, 7:15pm ET

Mary Wible and Walt Lafty on “The GAR Civil War Museum and Archive is a hidden gem in the Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia”.

Join Old Baldy CWRT members Mary Wible and Walt Lafty as they share the history of the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Archive, highlight parts of the collection, share artifacts, and provide samples of records and documents of Civil War veterans and the interesting stories behind them.

The Mission of the Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum & Library is to preserve the heritage and history of the Civil War era through the presentation of historical programs, forums and exhibitions designed to promote a better understanding of American history. The Museum is located in the historically certified Lewis-Pattison House, 8110 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19136. 

Meeting of Thursday, July 17, 2025, 7:15pm ET

Dr. Alys Beverton on “Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination during the Civil War Era”

Before 1861, US Americans could confidently claim to belong to the New World’s “exceptional” republic, unlike other self-governing nations in the Western Hemisphere such as Mexico, which struggled with political violence and unrest. Americans used such comparisons to show themselves and the world that democracy in the United States was working as designed.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 exploded this illusion by showing that the United States was in fact not immune to domestic political instability. Joining a growing community of historians who study the war in a global context, Alys D. Beverton examines Mexico’s place in the US imagination during the Civil War and postbellum period. Beverton reveals how pro- and antiwar Confederates and Unionists alike used Mexico’s long history of political strife to alternately justify and oppose the Civil War and, after 1865, various policies aimed at reuniting the states. Both sides used Mexico as a cautionary tale of how easily a nation, even the so-called exceptional United States, could slip into anarchy in the tumultuous nineteenth century.

Alys D. Beverton is senior lecturer in American history at Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, United Kingdom. Dr. Beverton has a BA in American Studies and an MPhil in American History and Literature, both from the University of Sussex. She completed her PhD in History at University College London in 2018. She worked in various teaching roles at UCL, Queen Mary University of London, and Cardiff University before joining Oxford Brookes in 2019.

Meeting of Thursday, June 12, 2025, 7:15pm ET

Steven R Stotelmyer on “From Frederick to Sharpsburg: People, Places, and Events of the Maryland Campaign Before Antietam”

The Battle of Antietam stands out as the single bloodiest day’s combat in American history. More people were killed or injured on September 17, 1862, than any other day in our nation’s entire history. With 23,000 casualties it is understandable that this single event tends to take the spotlight in the Maryland Campaign of 1862. However, Robert E. Lee did not begin crossing the Potomac on September 4. 1862, just so he could fight at Sharpsburg 13 days later with his back to that same river. From Frederick to Sharpsburg sheds light on some of the other participants and events long obscured in the shadow cast by America’s bloodiest day.

Steven R. Stotelmyer is a native of Hagerstown, Maryland. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Frostburg State College and a Master of Arts from Hood College in Frederick. He is a founding member of the Central Maryland Heritage League, a non-profit land trust which helped preserve some of the South Mountain Battlefield. This led to the publication of The Bivouacs of the Dead: The Story of Those Who Died at Antietam and South Mountain (Toomey Press, 1992). In 2019 Stotelmyer authored Too Useful To Sacrifice, Reconsidering George B. McClellan’s Generalship in the Maryland Campaign from South Mountain to Antietam (Savas Beatie, 2019). Currently, Steve is a National Park Service Volunteer as well as a NPS Certified Antietam and South Mountain Battlefield Tour Guide. 

Meeting of Thursday, May 8, 2025, 7:15pm ET

Walt Lafty on “A Near Death Experience: The Battle of Stones River, a Turning Point in the War”

The Battle of Stones River in Tennessee was the last battle of 1862 and the first of 1863. It was one of the best defensive battles fought during the civil war, and saw many heroics, on both sides, ending in a Union strategic win. The battle is number one in percentage of casualties to troops engaged, slightly higher than the battle of Gettysburg. Months after the battle, President Lincoln said that “…had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over”. It can be considered one of the most important political turning points of the war.

Walt Lafty has been active in various Civil War groups for almost twenty years. Currently those include the Delaware Valley CWRT where he is a board member as well as a member of the preservation committee; and he is also an active member of the Old Baldy CWRT. In addition, Walt is a volunteer and research administrator at the G.A.R. Museum in Philadelphia. He is also a member of Baker-Fisher Camp 101 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in Hatboro PA, where he serves as the camp secretary, and he is also a member of the General Meade Society.

Meeting Of April 10, 2025 7:15

Ron Kirkwood on “Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories From Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm”

The George Spangler Farm in Gettysburg is a place of reverence. Nurses held the hands of dying soldiers and prayed and spoke last words with them amid the blood, stench, and agony of two hospitals. Heroic surgeons resolutely worked around the clock to save lives. Author Ronald D. Kirkwood’s best-selling “Too Much for Human Endurance”: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg established the military and medical importance of the Spangler farm and hospitals. “Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories From Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm is Ron’s eagerly awaited sequel. Kirkwood researched thousands of pensions and military records, hospital files, letters, newspapers, and diaries of those present at the hospitals on Spangler land during and after the battle. The result is a deeper and richer understanding of what these men and women endured—suffering that often lingered for the rest of their lives. Their injuries and deaths, Yankee and Rebel alike, carried with it not only tragedy and sadness for parents, spouses, and children, but often financial devastation as well.

Ronald D. Kirkwood is retired after a 40-year career as an editor and writer in newspapers and magazines, including USA TODAY, the Baltimore Sun, Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, York (PA) Daily Record, and Midland (MI) Daily News. Ron edited national magazines for USA TODAY Sports and was NFL editor for USA TODAY Sports Weekly. He won state, regional, and national awards and managed the copy desk in Harrisburg when the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. Ron has been a Gettysburg Foundation docent at the George Spangler Farm Civil War Field Hospital Site since it opened in 2013. He is a native of Dowagiac/Sister Lakes, MI, and a graduate of Central Michigan University, where he has returned as guest speaker for journalism classes as part of the school’s Hearst Visiting Professionals series. Ron and his wife of almost 50 years, Barbara, live in the deer-filled countryside near Murrysville, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh.

Meeting of March 13, 2025, 7:15pm


Phil Roycraft  on “The Plot to Perpetuate Slavery: How George McClellan, Southern Spies and a Confidence Man Nearly Derailed Emancipation”.

In the aftermath of the September 1862 Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued the most significant presidential decree in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, which would forever free all slaves in territory not under Union control. Nevertheless, his chief military commander in the field, Major General George B. McClellan, was outraged. Within days, two former Union officers nefariously crossed the lines into rebeldom, an initiative resulting in an elaborate subterfuge to scam Lincoln into withdrawing the Proclamation in return for nebulous promises of peace.

This book tells the story, obscured in a veil of secrecy for 150 years, of the cloak and dagger chess match between Union detectives and Southern operatives in the months before emancipation become effective. Despite an ominous warning by author Herman Melville five years before, the scheme to perpetuate slavery almost succeeded, for it was engineered by a man the National Police Gazette once declared the “King of the Confidence Men.”

Phil Roycraft is an environmental engineer, historian and author specializing in the Civil War era. He has written articles for a variety of historical journals including the Michigan History Magazine, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Journal of Illinois History and the Maryland Historical Magazine. He lives in Cadillac, Michigan.

Meeting of February 13, 2025

Kelly Hancock on “The Art of Surviving: Belle Island and Beyond”.

Using Belle Isle as a starting point, delve into the horror of life in Civil War prison camps, both North and South, and discover the many ways prisoners sought to maintain sanity in the midst of squalor, disease, and malnutrition.  Numerous pieces of the Museum’s POW art collection are displayed through PowerPoint.

Kelly Hancock is Director of Programs at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Va. Kelly oversees programs and education at the Museum for the general public, students, teachers, and senior adults, initiating the research, development, and implementation of programs for audiences both on- and off-site. A museum professional for over twenty years, she has a passion for uncovering history and bringing to light lesser-known stories from the past. Kelly is a graduate of Eastern New Mexico University.