Writing Tempest: The Cover Image

The battle of Spotsylvania Court House has not received the sort of attention in popular culture that, say, Gettysburg has. So when we looked for cover art for A Tempest of Iron and Lead, we didn’t have a lot of options to draw on.

The single best-known image, a painting by Thure de Thulstrup, has appeared widely—in such places as Jeff Wert’s The Heart of Hell, Noah Andre Trudeau’s Bloody Roads South, and Earl Hess’s Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee. A free-standing copy of the painting stood at Spotsylvania’s East Angle and it appeared on Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park’s brochure. For good measure, I even have a copy hanging in my writing room.

So, in the limited cannon on Spotsy-related stuff, that image has made the rounds. As such, it didn’t strike us as being an especially distinctive piece.

For that same reason, I didn’t want to use the same painting of John Sedgwick’s death that appears on the cover of Gordon Rhea’s seminal The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern.

There’s not a lot else out there, though. There’s a wonderful image by N. C. Wyeth—a copy of which I also have in my writing room—but it felt a little too fanciful for the cover. (I did use it inside.) Alfred Waud made some sketches, but nothing very gripping.

A common trope on covers these days is to use modern Civil War art. Unfortunately, modern artists haven’t painted Spotsylvania the way they’ve painted Gettysburg or Gettysburg or Gettysburg (or other battles or leaders).

In the end, Ted Savas and I opted for an image of graves on the battlefield. Taken by Dr. Reed Bontecou in April 1866, the image depicts the graves of eleven members of the 16^th Mississippi, killed as they counterattacked into the Mule Shoe on the morning of May 12, 1864. Eight of the names are legible in the photo.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could identify those soldiers and include something in the book about them?” Ted asked.

Time was not our ally, though. The final production deadline loomed, and we had only a couple blank pages to work with.

I turned to a friend, John Cummings, a historian who lives in Spotsylvania who has done extensive work on Civil War photography and on Bontecou’s series of photos, particularly. As I knew, the image of the Mississippi graves was one of John’s favorites. I asked him if he’d be willing to write a short piece about the image and the men whose legible names are scrawled on eight of the headboards. John graciously agreed, and the book ends with a final coda, written by John, that bears testament to those men whose graves are on the cover. I am deeply grateful for John’s thoughtful contribution to the book.

A special shout-out, too, to Doug Litts of Archives and Special Collections at the United States Military Academy, who helped me track down a high-res version of the Mississippi graves.

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A Tempest of Iron and Lead: Spotsylvania Court House, May 8–21, 1864 is available from Savas Beatie here.