ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The Civil War battle of Spotsylvania Court House saw the most sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war and ranks as its third-bloodiest battle, with more than 31,000 casualties.
Chris Mackowski, a writing professor in St. Bonaventure University’s Jandoli School of Communication, has written a new book about the battle, “A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864.” The book, published by Savas Beatie LLC, has already been chosen as a selection by the History Book Club.
“As brutal and as important as this battle was, it’s largely been overlooked in the literature of the war,” Mackowski said. “I really wanted to go in depth with this book, but I also wanted to tell a compelling story, one that would grab readers and pull them in. My goal was to write something comprehensive and comprehensible.”
In reviewing the book, A. Wilson Greene, a retired staff historian from Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park (FSNMP) — which includes the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield — called the book “A fine piece of scholarship and literature.”
“Chris Mackowski combines an engaging writing style with an intimate knowledge of his subject to produce the first comprehensive account of the Spotsylvania Campaign in more than a generation,” Greene said.
The battle of Spotsylvania Court House took place near the beginning of a six-week stretch of continuous battle and maneuver now known as the Overland Campaign. It pitted Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in a series of contests that stretched from outside Fredericksburg, Virginia, to the gates of Richmond, the Confederate capital. At Spotsylvania, the fighting ended in a tactical draw, but the Union army scored an operational victory because it was able to continue its march southward. The armies would leave more than 30,000 casualties in their wake.
“The complexities of the monumental, 13-day battle of Spotsylvania Court House often baffle the closest students of the war — and even the soldiers who were there,” said John Hennessy, retired chief historian from FSNMP. “Chris combines deep knowledge of the ground, careful consideration of historic sources, and his considerable literary chops to give us a vivid, fast-paced, sure-footed narrative of the defining days of Grant and Lee’s 1864 Overland Campaign.”
Mackowski’s familiarity with the ground comes, in part, because his family owns nearly 100 acres of the battlefield outside the boundaries of the national battlefield. He formerly worked for the National Park Service as a seasonal ranger at the battlefield and has been giving tours of the battlefield for nearly 20 years.
“I have spent a lot of time ‘walking the ground,’ which makes a huge difference in understanding why events happened as they did,” Mackowski said. “That’s one reason I’m such a huge advocate for battlefield preservation: the battlefields are our most important primary source for understanding the battles. They let us walk in the footsteps of history. I worked hard to bring the insights from that into the book.”
“A Tempest of Iron and Lead” differs from many of Mackowski’s other books because of its length. “A lot of my books are relatively short paperbacks, intended to serve as reader-friendly, general overviews that can help people understand an event in relatively short order,” Mackowski explains. “The new book is an in-depth hardcover, full of a lot of details and a lot of human-interest stories. It’s a bit more hard-core that way, although I still wanted the narrative to be reader friendly. I think it’s important for people to stay connected to history, so I want to make it as accessible as possible.”
Mackowski, a professor of journalism and mass communication, teaches writing in the Jandoli School of Communication, where he also serves as associate dean for undergraduate programs. He is editor in chief of the digital history platform Emerging Civil War (emergingcivilwar.com) and the author, co-author or editor of more than two dozen Civil War books.
