In February of 1864, my great great great grandfather, David Coon, volunteered for the 36th Wisconsin Infantry as a Union soldier in the American Civil War. The letters he sent home chronicled the 7 months he spent in some of the most consequential battles near the end of the war before being captured and held as a prisoner.
In May and June of 2026, I digitized and typeset each letter and included 10 additional pages of research. This research included contacting historians, finding images in the Library of Congress, and reading about the Siege of Petersburg and the political ramifications of POW camps during the Civil War. The prison camps were brutal, hellish places of rampant disease, starvation, violence, and acute societal collapse which has yet to be widely acknowledged and atoned for in the American consciousness. My intention with this research is to place David Coon’s letters within a more complete context of the desperation of this war for posterity.
The cover design pulls from the Library of Congress and historical references. The front silhouette image is taken from a photograph of a Union soldier uniform by Oliver H. Willard. The background etching is from Frank Leslie’s Scenes and Portraits of the Civil War, page 426 and depicts The Siege of Petersburg- Battle of Ream’s Station, a battle in which most of the company was captured.
All book type is set in Alegreya, designed by Juan Pablo del Peral of Huerta Tipográfica for Google. Alegreya was chosen for its superior legibility and sophistication on print and screen.
Cover type is LTC Goudy Thirty by Frederic W. Goudy for its calligraphic serifs and contrast and how it looked as a monogram.
