May 2026 meeting of the CWRT: Chris Mackowski on “A Tempest of Iron and Lead: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House”

Chris Mackowski on “A Tempest of Iron and Lead: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House” for more info: www.chicagocwrt.org For twenty-two straight hours, in torrential downpours, up to their knees in mud and blood, Federals and Confederates slugged it out in the most intense sustained hand-to-hand combat of the war. A panoply of horror, one soldier called it. A Saturnalia of blood. Hell’s Half-Acre. The slaughter pen of Spotsylvania. Most remember it simply as the Bloody Angle. Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Emerging Civil War and the series editor of the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series, published by Savas Beatie. Chris is a writing professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, NY, where he also serves as associate dean for undergraduate programs. Chris is also historian-in-residence at Stevenson Ridge, a historic property on the Spotsylvania battlefield in central Virginia. He has worked as a historian for the National Park Service at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, where he gives tours at four major Civil War battlefields (Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, and Spotsylvania), as well as at the building where Stonewall Jackson died. Chris has authored or co-authored nearly two dozen books and edited a half-dozen essay collections on the Civil War, and his articles have appeared in all the major Civil War magazines