April 10, 1863

April 10, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 10, 1863
Dear mother:

Your much valued letter received. I am just as glad as I can be that all are well but there is a tone of plaint as to things I can't
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understand. It must be you have the blues. Don't think of me as being in danger for a minute, for I am having a royal good time. Its this way with me. If I have the blues it is when I get a fit on of thinking of the past when I did'nt do as I should. I guess you would call it remorse. Some of the younger fellows and I have talked these things over and I find they were kind of troubled in the same way. They said it made them feel awful mean when they remembered some sly things or some deception they played on their mother and father. These things bring on homesickness and that sends them to the hospital, because they can't eat and so are put down on the sick list. I think as much of home as any of them but I don't want to see it until we thrash the rebs to a finish. We have four Wisconsin regiments at this place, the 25, 27, 31 and 34, a full brigade. You have doubtless heard, that the Gov. is enlisting negroes and forming negro regiments. They are officered by whites and there are a lot of candidates for positions in all the white regiments. Some 25 have applied for positions from our regiment. There is a lot of joking on the side about the fellows that want to officer the nigger regiments. Our regt. has just drawn a new outfit of rubber blankets, hats and short coats. Enclosed you will find some flowers given me by a poor black washer woman I met on the road up the bluff today with a bundle of clothes on her head. As she handed them to me she said "Please massa will you 'cept dese flowers from a poor nigger woman who jes loves de Lincoln soldiers." Maybe you has a sweet heart and will send um to her." I told her I had a sweet heart, my mother, and she said "You's a good boy honey." The black folks are awful good, poor miserable things that they are. The boys talk to them fearful and treat them most any way and yet they can't talk two minutes but tears come to their eyes and they throw their arms up and down and praise de Lord for de coming of de Lincoln soldiers.

In your last letter you spoke of my going to school, if I ever return.. I am not bothering about things so far in the future. I am troubled about this awful war. Maybe I ought to think more of Webster, as father keeps jibing me about my spelling. If he will give me time I will learn to spell too as I aint but 16 years old, that is I'll be 17 on the 15th of May if there has been no juggling with the family register.

By the way I nearly lost some valuables the other night. I was on Provost guard, the other night in town, at the depot. My relief had lain down at 11 o'clock for a four hours sleep. At 3 o'clock in the morning we were routed to go on guard, feeling in my pockets I found my gold pen missing. My money I had placed in my shirt pocket was safe. The comrade next me lost $17. In the morning my gold pen and holder was found in the mud near the platform. A detective force has been looking for the thieves but they don't find any thieves. Word has just come that Nathan Mann of our Co. has just died in the hospital. Poor fellow, he has two brothers left in our compaany.

A skirmish yesterday at Hickman, 26 guerillas were captured and bro't to this place for confinment as prisoners of war. There is nothing very stirring about us. The boys are getting tired of mere guard duty and are hoping for any chance that will send us to the front. For my part I aint dying to go to Vicksburg where their is a better chance of getting killed as some claim they are. Maybe they are more anxious to die for their country than I am but from what I know of them I am doubtful. There is nothing farther from my mind at this writing than a wish to
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die for anybody or anything. I am hopeing and praying for anything to make the rebels squeal and call it quits so I can come home and have a good time. Of course I am willing to take my chance, come what may, but I would a little rather live, come what may.

Tell Elder Morse, Henry is all right and eats, if any difference more than his rations every day.

Love to all.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

April 15, 1863

April 15, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 15, 1863
Dear Father: -- Yours of April 9th came in due time. I am so glad all are well and that you are so cheerful and hopeful that the war will soon end.

You must be very brave to undertake so much work as you have planned, this spring. I have just received a letter from cousin Ben Gardner, whose regiment is camped just back of Memphis, Tennessee. You know he is in the cavalry. He says he is orderly and having a good time. Plenty of rations, no bullets to face and regular pay. He says, "I hope to meet you my son and talk over family matters and get a good look at you." I'll bet he is a lively fellow and loves a good time. He writes about the war as if it was a picnic. I enclose his last letter. He has no fear of rebel bullets, you can see that.

We moved our camp yesterday over near the brow of the overhanging bluff. The view is much finer especially of the Mississippi. Say father do you know I never look at the river but I think of home. I go down to the shore nearly every day to wash my feet. When I dip my hand in the water I think that it comes from Wisconsin and I wonder what part of it came from Beef River. It is terribly black and muddy, made so by the water of the Missouri that flows into it above St. Louis. From our new camp we can see the daily mail boat, 12 or 15 miles away that brings us good and bad news from home and from Washington.

Last night I lay awake for hours listening to the honk honk of the wild geese passing over our camp toward the north. Does the dam which we repaired, the beaver dam east, still hold? If it does you must have plenty of shooting at ducks and geese this spring. Don't think me homesick father, when I tell you I turned over many times in my bunk last night thinking of the stories you told me of the early French traders who broke the great beaver dams to get the beavers and so destroyed the nesting places of the wild ducks and geese that made their homes in our valley and on the neighboring creeks before the coming of the whites. That novel called "The Prairie Flower" still sticks in my craw. I never read any book that so haunted me, sleeping or awake. I remember that you told me that it was poison to read such stuff, but I don't believe it has hurt me. The people in "The Prairie Flower" were not in fear of any law but they did right in the midst of the Sioux Indians and the lonesome hills and wild animals about them. I remember you said Prairie Flower was a fictitious character, an unreal character, and that women were not as good on the average as she was painted. Well father, I thought you might be wrong then but now I have come to think that you were right. Getting back to ducks and geese and the beavers, how I wish I might be with you this spring. What lots of fun you are having. All this passed through my mind last night as I lay in my tent with the lappel thrown back so I could see the north star and the dipper. Both of them are nearer the horizon than in Wisconsin. But they brought to me in their
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silence and sameness something of the nearness of home.

The deep dark forests on the Missouri side reaching back for miles are slowly turning to green. Spring is here and no mistake. The freshness of the grass and leaves, the golden sunshine and carol of birds in every tree, give no hint of this human war. One thing I most forgot. I expressed $20 with Capt. Darwin to Durand. You may have to go to his home for it. His family lives about three miles from Durand. I have an overcoat I wish was home. I will give it away to the first darkey that looks like Uncle Tom. I know there are some grey backs in it. I would rather put the grey backs on some darkey than on mother, for I know she dreads such things.

I send you today a couple of southern papers. One, The War Eagle, printed at this place, the other a Vicksburg sheet full of brag and bluster about fooling the Yankees. They are a fair specimen of southern newspapers. Are there any copperheads up there? It makes the boys mad to read of copperheads at home. They are more dangerous than rebels at the front because the south is made to believe they have lots of friends in the north. They had better lay low if we ever get home. They will find its no joke to the south.

How I should like to have a brotherly tussel with brother K. and I think of the boys so often. Well, we will have a good time when the war is over.

How does Henry Amidon prosper? Confound him he has forgotten old times I guess. I have written him but he don't answer. I asked him in my letter if he remembered the time his father caught us down by the swiming pool laying in the hot sand stark naked and covering ourselves with the sand. I never was more ashamed in my life than when his father hollared and yelled to see us and we rolled into the creek to hide. Henry didnt mind it as much as I did. O, but those were happy days and we didn't know it.

Father good bye till next week.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

April 20, 1864

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 20, 1864
Dear mother: It has been a week, yes and more, since my last letter to you. I had hoped to hear from you and yet I am not surprised that no letter from home has reached me yet. The mails so far south are very irregular. The postoffice people are watching the movements of the rebels and won't send out mail over these southern roads unless they are sure.

I am idle most of the time and I thought it a good time to write my mother even if I don't have much to write. Moresville is a sorry, sleepy little place at the foot of some big hills or mountains, on the bank of a clear, pretty stream something bigger then Elk Creek at Gilmanton. Our duty here is light. The boys call it Soft Snap. That is the name of the camp. It has been soft enough for me. The Orderly has been kind to me. He has not put me on guard or any other duty since my return. He says I must get strong before the big march begins to Chatanooga, where Gen. Sherman is collecting a big army to march into Georgia. Eck Harvey says, "Take it easy boys while you can, for soon we will get plenty of fighting." I am messing with Dan Hadley and Obed Hillard. The boys are real good to me and I am glad to be back with them. I am able to take my regular rations of hard tack and sow belly and feel all right.

April 20th
Our regiment has not yet returned from Decatur, a few miles south of the Tennessee river for which place they left here Saturday evening. Reports say that they had a sharp fight with the rebs and several of the boys in Co. K were wounded. We had been hearing cannons all the forenoon.

I had taken my place in the ranks and expected to march with the boys but the captain ordered me back to camp., saying that I was not fit to go. I hated to go back because I knew some of the boys would say I was "soldiering." "Soldiering," means playing off. There were 18 others of our Co. left beside me and about the same number in each of the ten companies. We were busy on police and guard duty till the regiment got back. I am writing this sitting under a big sycamore tree close to the river. The woods are in full leaf and the mocking birds are singing all round me. It seems strange that human beings should be trying to kill each other when all the world around is at peace.

April 22. For two days and nights I have been on guard without relief. I don't mind it and the boys say I am getting fat. The boys are still at Decatur. Some of the band boys came up from Decatur and report that the rebs are whaling away with their 12 pounder but don't come in reach of musket range. They have a wire stretched from here to Decatur so we keep in touch with the regiment. I don't believe there is much rebel force behind these rebel cannon. They are just trying to hold us here for some purpose, we don't understand.

April 23rd
I have just come from town, 80 rods, with some milk and meal and a mess of doughnuts. An uncommon bill of fare in this south land.

The aristocracy here are getting pretty humble and are glad to exchange milk and corn meal for hard tack, pork and coffee. It has been an awful come down for Maser and Mistus. As Elder Harwood our Chaplin said, they would sow the wind and now they are reaping the whirlwind. The Freedmen fare just as well as the master and mistress. The big white mansion on the plantations of the south has no more in it to eat or wear than the Freedman's cabin. Where I got my milk and meal to-day, I rang several times before the door was opened. A pale
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faced white girl opened the door and when I told her I had been ringing for some time she apologized by saying she supposed it was some of "Aunties" nigger friends come to call on her. "You know" she said we have no future control over our servants. "Auntie" as it seems was away somewhere, calling without fear of mistress. We are glad to get their "Doegods" as the boys call their doughnuts, in exchange for sow belly and hard tack. These whites are afraid of the "Yankees" as they call us soldiers. The boys are always singing John Brown's Body, and they seem to think all we care for is to free the slaves. And to tell the truth, that is about all I care for. But the Union, the Union the Union, as father says, half slave and half free.

I don't believe in hating anybody but the way these old slave holders treat us, they snub us every time we meet them. I don't like them, not a bit.

An important message has come and we are ordered in line by the adjutant. Love to all.

Your Son.

CHAUNCEY.

April 25, 1863

April 25, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 25, 1863
Dear father:

Your latest leter rec'd. I am perfectly happy to know that all are well at home. Don't worry
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about my morals or my health, I am taking pretty good care of both. The life of the soldier is not a very good reform school, but a boy can keep clean in the army, bad as it is around him, if he has the stuff in him. Our Lieutenant Colonel was talking about the loose ways of some of the soldiers the other day. He said there would be one man if he lived that would go home as clean as when he entered the army, meaning himself of course.

Dan Hadley got a letter from Geo. W. Gilkey the other day. It was a nice friendly letter. He said he hoped we would hurry up and lick the rebels so we could come home as they needed our society in Buffalo Co. He said the girls were all waiting for a soldier boy. Mr. Gilkey seems to be a fine man. I see by the northern papers there is talk of conscripting. Are you in the conscript limit? I hope not. I would hate to see you in the army. I don't think the government will need any more soldiers. They are planning a big campaign on the Potomac to try and break Lee's army. Grant has driven Gen. Pendleton into Vicksburg and is closing in around that city. The move seems to be to lay seige and starve him out. We hear a lot of such talk on the streets but the fellows keep mighty straight in their conduct.

There are some rebel officers in prison here. I was on provost guard the other day and stood on a post near a barred window of the jail. I could see four or five young locking fellows in the room walking back and forth in their grey uniforms, trimmed in fancy gold braid and shoulder straps. They would call me up to the window and try to make snakes out of me. They said I was a black Republican and that I was fighting for the niggers and didn't know it. The oldest one talked like a gentleman, asked me a lot of questions about Wisconsin and said he had a boy in the southern army about my age.

Since the hot weather we are all getting our hair shaved off. Mine is cut close to my scalp. Boats are passing daily loaded with troops for Vicksbury. It begins to look warlike in that vicinity. There will be a big battle at Pemberton will come out side his breastworks and fight. We look any day for orders to go down there. We don't know the names of the troops that go by but we always give them a good big hurrah and they send it back with a roar.

We expect the 27th. Wisconsin here tomorrow. We will make them welcome as we have a lot of picket duty for the force at this place. Yes I wish you would send me the Sentinel while we stay here at least. Northern papers are peddled in camp at from ten to fifteen cents apiece.

Its nice that you have some fresh cows. Better not try to raise the calves you have so much else to do. We get pretty good milk from the nearby farmers but they don't know how to make butter. Its white and rank. The cows down here are a poor starved looking race. They have no grass for hay much to depend on, they have corn stalks for feed in winter. The Blue Grass region is away east of here. That is the home too of the Kentucky horses we have read about.

Well, the boys are putting on their belts getting ready for the call to drill so I must close for this time.

Love to all,

Your son,

CHAUNCEY. 

April 25, 1864

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 25, 1864
Camp near Decature. Ala.

Dear Father and Mother:

I can write you just as I can snatch a moment here and there. We don't have much drill, nor much active duty at the front, but there is some police duty or other going on all the while. When nothing else is in sight we are ordered to clean our guns and see that our ammunition is in order. I have just been dusting my clothes and polishing the buckle on my hat and the brass letters on my cartridge boxes.

A fight seems to be in the air as the rebs are not far from here and their artillery keeps pegging away. Wish they would come in musket range but they won't.

We came into Decatur last night It was our first march since I rejoined the regiment. The boys are all busy fixing up tents and arranging things in spite of the fact we are under marching orders to be ready to leave Chatanooga any hour.

At nine o'clock we were ordered to stack arms and be ready to exchange our old Enfield guns made in England for new Springfield guns made in America.

April 26th
I don't like this town as well as Moresville. It is pretty enough too, but the whites are all scared away and we have no one to trade hard tack and sow belly with. At Moresville we got corn pones and sweet potatoes for pickled pork and hard bread. It's getting warm. The sun burns good and hot. I shall have to cut the tail off my dress coat and make a jacket of it or draw a blouse. We would like mighty well to get sight of the paymaster and our credit is getting poor with the sutler.

I don't remember if I told you that Henry Morse is back again with the company. He is getting stout again and rough as ever. It's strange Henry don't write to his folks. If you see Elder Morse give him my regards, and tell him Henry is all right. Eck Harvey has never been the same since Bill Anderson died. They were the two tallest men in the company and always headed the company column. The fact is. I can see a great change in many of the boys since last fall. They are not so wild as they were and I believe they are better. As I write one of the sergeants came round warning us to be ready any moment to fall in as the enemy is getting louder, and to be ready any moment for action. Just the same the boys go on writing letters and playing cards as the case happens, paying no attention to the rattle of the rebels cannon on our right. The darkies are coming into our camp in
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droves. They tell all sorts of stories about the rebels, but they are so ignorant and scared I don't think their stories are minded much. The women, and some of them are nearly white, are all looking for washing jobs. They borrow big coffee kettles of the boys and build fires down by the creek and do their washings. Lots of the boys hang round and tease them. They will do anything on earth for a Linkun soldier, as they call us, and still the boys treat them mean.

An orderly just galloped up to the Colonel's tent with a message. It may be an order to march.

Love to all,

CHAUNCEY.

April 7, 1864

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, April 7, 1864
Dear Sister:

I believe my last was written father from Cairo Illinois. The same day our squad got transportation to Louisville Kentucky by way of Cen tral Illinois which means taking our back track a hundred and fifty miles. Look on the map and you can see better than I can tell you. We got into Louisville Monday morning.

They call Louisville the biggest city in Kentucky and the nicest.

It looks pretty, all right to a country boy. They have lots of iron works and they make Kentucky whiskey here in plenty. Some of the boys tried the whiskey and said it was better than yankee whiskey.

Soon as we arrived we were ordered into quarters and stayed until seven in the morning when we took the train for Nashville, Tenn.

There were seven coaches all loaded with returning soldiers, going to rejoin their regiments. In Nashville the entire squad some 300 were sent to barracks in the Zollicoffer bullding built by the rebel General Zollicoffer. The rebs had to quit the city before it was finished. It's the biggest structure in Nashville. We have been here two days. I went up to see the state capitol and spent a few hours reading the picture of the famous men of the State. Their life sized pictures hang all around the walls. Sam Houston was the only one and Davy Crocket that I knew much about. Then I knew more from what I have heard father say of them than from books.

The Capitol stands on a knoll in the center of the town, much like Madison. The building is not so large nor so pretty.

I am feling better every day. I have nothing like a chill since I left Chicago. Aunt Lydia gave me something that seems to knock them.

Last night the boys sang a lot of darkey songs more than a hundred voices joining in, and I tell you it made the building tremble.

This is a nice country along the road much like Buffalo county, or would be if Buffalo county had peach trees on the road side. You can pick the blossoms from the windows of the cars. The farms look neglected. The darkies are free and the whites won't or can't work It's funny how the darkies show their liking for the soldiers of Lincoln. When they meet in the main streets they hardly notice us, but round the corner or on a back street they take off their hats and say, "God bress de Linkum, soldiers." The poor creatures can't feel very free so long as they are afraid to speak to us on the main streets.

I don't exactly like the darkies, but I pity them and what father said to me when he held my hand as I got into the wagon at [...] Fullers I can never forget. You know that father thot that John Brown and Garrison and Wendell Philips did more to free the slaves than all the pulpits in the land. I won't go back on the black man for father's sake.

Say sister, you are a bit mistaken I have no correspondent save you and mother and father. No, I have not written Myra, nor has she written me. You may say to her if you care to, what I told you about the last spelling match. I say yet that I would sooner she would spell me down than any one else. It tickled me to see her so fidgety and so excited that she won the prize. I think the teacher rather helped her to spell the word just the same. But I don't care.

My only bother now is some sore toes. My big toe nail is growing in to my big toe so I limp when I walk. Plague on it I must try and cut them out.

More next time when I get to the regiment. Direct Via Cairo Illinois.

Your brother,

CHAUNCEY.

April 9, 1864

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 9, 1864
Dear Parents:

Left Nashville Thursday last for Huntsville, where we expect to find the regiments of as many states. We were piled in box cars on sacked oats and corn. When night came we pulled the doors shut and rolled up our blankets. We realized we were in the enemy's country. We had heard that trains had been wrecked and bridges burned and it was talked in Nashville that there was a gang of bushwhackers about a hundred miles out on our road in the mountains that were derailing trains.

The worn and slivered rails jolted us fearfully. It must have been near twelve o'clock when the whole train went off the track and every car between the car I was in and the engine, including the engine, turned over down the bank. A number of the soldiers were smothered under the grain sacks and a good many had arm and legs broken. It was found that one of the rails had been pulled up, A man from a farm near by told us in the morning that he heard pounding on the track but supposed it was the section men at work. It took until next afternoon to fix the track and another train came for us. I was not hurt nor was any one in our car. The engineer said we were running 25 miles an hour. We arrived at Stevenson. Alabama the next morning. Murfreesbourough and Bowling Green are on the line of this road. We passed them at night. So much of this country reminds me of Wisconsin. The hills are cultivated more than with us, and they are badly washed. The roads are lined with peach trees all in bloom.

There are several other 25th boys in the crowd on their way to join the regiment. We were ordered into quarters soon as we got here, to wait so we were told, for a train.

Sunday the 10th
Soon as we finished dinner we boarded the train for Huntsville. Arrived just at sunset. Here we found our regiment was in camp 25 miles further at Moresville. We stayed in Huntsville two days.

Say, but this is a pretty town. Only like all towns in the South, there is no life nor business. The negroes wear a happy look but the whites look sullen and don't like to talk. Many of the business houses are boarded up as if they had gone out of business. The big court houses and grounds in the center of the town are fine. A regiment of Jersey Zouaves are camped under the big trees in the court house square. The boys claim they are having a fine time. Light duty, plenty to eat and the finest water in the south. The biggest spring in all the south flows from a cliff nearly a hundred feet high, within a block of the court house. There is nearly as much water as runs in Beef river.

Tuesday, the 12th
On our way to the depot, this noon to take the train for Moresville we saw a horrible sight. A battery of five guns was returning from drill across the railroad track when the shells of one of the cassions exploded blowing six men almost to atoms. One of them was thrown into the air above the tree tops and falling thru limbs his entrails were strung from the limbs to the ground. The gun carriages were shattered to pieces and the horses killed. I want to tell you it was a hard sight to see.

I found the boys at Morseville and was glad to be with them again.

I was surprised to find Dan Hadley and Henry Morse had got back a head of me. Tell their folks, if you see them, that they are hale and hearty.

Henry says he never felt so strong.

Love to all.

CHAUNCEY.

August 14, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 14, 1863
Dear Mother:

Your favor with father's came to-day. It seems a long time between letters, I read them over and over. They are the second I have had since we came to this miserable town. The sallow faced natives here call it Arkansaw. I don't blame them. Any kind of a name is good enough for such a dismally flat sickly country. I have had a touch of chills twice the last week. Our Regiment has moved again nearer the river and nights when all is still I can hear the swash of the waves along the shore. There are a lot of boats passing day and night and all up the river boats are loaded with Grant's soldiers bound for the Tennessee and Potomac campaigns. It looks as if we are to hold this place for some time. Our duty being to stand provost guard on city patrols The most of the troops here a week ago have been ordered out to garrison Little Rock.

The war cloud that has been looming up in Arkansaw has about vanished. It looks as if the rebs cannot muster force enough to make a stand.

The darkies are bringing in lots of fruit and selling it to the soldiers. They buy it of their former masters and "tote" it down on their heads. I am eating sparingly of green fruit.

So father's contraband (negro) has left him so soon. Well, you remember what I told you about their tricks. Making them free has rattled them. They think they have nothing to do now but play the banjo and dance juba. They are a funny race and no mistake. I like to hear them laugh.

I am sorry that the corn crop is likely to fail. Perhaps the frost has not spoiled it all. What in the world can you do with the pigs? If it wasn't for the wolves you could turn them on the hills to eat acorns.

It gives me the blues that you are having such poor crops. And so Indian Charley and his band don't come back this summer as he used to with bear meat and venison. Well athat means better hunting this fall for you. But what has become of poor Charley and his family? I am so afraid he was killed in Minnesota last summer or he killed somebody himself, some white man, and has gone west with the rest of the Sioux. You know Mother, I can never forget Charley. He was always good to us when during the first years no whites lived near us and his band might have scalped us all and nobody would have known it for months after.

So Mr. Cripps got his rifle back from Indian Curley. That proves to my mind that Curley never was in the Minnesota massacre. If he had been he would never have showed up. It proves another thing. It proves that Indians are honest when they are dealing with honest people. It would have been a wicked thing if Cripps had shot Curley
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on suspicion that he had used his rifle shooting whites in Minnesota. It was to save his own life that he stayed away this long. He knew the whites were wild over the Sioux war and ready to shoot any red man on sight. I see by the paper you sent me, that every Sioux has been driven from Minnesota their home for generations. What's the matter with the white race? Why couldn't they live with the Indians around them as we have done all these years in peace and friendship?

You see mother I have nothing around here to write about of interest. I like better to talk about home matters.

Poor William Thomas of Mondovi is very low and they say he cannot live. What seems strange, the doctor says it is homesickness that is killing him. Dan Hadley and Obe Hilliard have just dropped in with a melon just to tease me. They know I can't eat such stuff. Dan says to remember him to the Gilmanton girls.

Good bye mother and father.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

P. S. -- I had sealed this letter, and have opened it to say that our Orderly has just notified me that I am on the list to go to Memphis day after to-morrow, to the General hospital. I

August 21, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 21, 1863
Dear Parents:

I had hoped never to write you as the inmate of a hospital but I couldn't help it. Day before yesterday 540 from Helena, that is Helena, Arkansas, were landed here in Memphis from the hospital steamer, Good Hope. There were more than a hundred and forty from my regiment. A lot from my company beside myself. I was glad Bill Anderson of Durand was in our crowd and glad that he was sent with me to the same hospital. Bill is a big, rough fellow but he was nice to us younger boys. He often came round and brought me things to eat and drink when he was sick himself. He is looking very bad just now but he says it's a "damned lie, I'm all right." Good hearted Bill.

Well, we got here in the night and in a heavy rain and in the mud. They had a time with their fat pine torches, getting us straightened round and separated into five bunches and sent to as many hospitals.

I carried my gun and belts from the landing but a big negro grabbed my knapsack and four or five others and lugged them to the hospital.

The Gayso Hospital is a big building on second street, looking out upon the river, I am all alone in my ward which is 7. That is there are no other soldiers in it that I know. There are 28 sick and wounded in the ward besides myself. I will finish this letter in the morning.

August 22nd
I had a nice bed, but somehow the gas lights or some thing kept me awake. My nurse, a great big woman with a kind face, brought me a clean pair of drawers and shirt and told me to take off everything and put them on, and sat down on the bed beside me as if she expected me to strip right before her. I didn't know what to do. Presently she got up and said, have your clothes tied up, I'll be back in ten minutes and carry them out to the wash room. When she went out I skinned off every thing quick as I could and got into the clean shirt and drawers and into bed about a minute before she got back. She didn't say a word but wrote out a check with my number, put it into my stand drawer, and pinned a duplicate on my clothes and carried them away.

August 23rd
I slept until about three this morning. A poor fellow about that time commenced calling for his mother, and between his
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moanings there was little quiet in the ward. The nurse after awhile would come again, she would arrange and smooth back his hair and go back to her room. His was only six beds from mine and his moanings kept me awake.

His moanings and cries for mother came fainter and fainter and when the nurse came at daylight he was dead. They wrapped him in a sheet and carried him away and a little later another man was put on his bed.

I don't like my Doctor although he is a Wisconsin man. He don't ask many questions and he smiles at my answers as if he thought I was trying to fool him.

When I told him the cough I had for a week past began to hurt me in my left breast, he looked at me for a moment while he twisted his mustache, then he said, "you ought to have your lung scraped." His answer made me feel that I had said something that I ought not to say. That unless I was in the deepest pain I ought to keep still. In truth I was not in very great pain except when I coughed. And my coughing was recent.

Don't let this trouble you for a moment Father and Mother, I shall be all right again very soon.

Your oldest boy,

CHAUNCEY.

August 3, 1863

August 3, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 3, 1863Dear Parents:

The expected move came at last. After four days of steaming and tugging and puffing and groaning, we find ourselves camped near Helena, Arkansas, on the banks of the old Mississippi. For nearly four days the wheels of the brave old boat went round and round stemming the muddy water of the dear old river. We were glad to know that every hour brought us nearer to good drinking water and pure air.

All the 27th and 28th of July the ambulances were busy picking up and carrying the sick to the hospital boats. The bands on the boats kept up their playing so as to give the sick fellows courage. The evening of the 28th our regiment, reduced to 700 men, marched on to an old vessel that had been used as a blockade runner, and as you may suppose it was full of holes bored through and through. Well we had not been on board an hour before the rain and wind began to pour upon us from above and from all sides. It was a regular cloud burst. The fellows on the upper deck were soaked and so were all of us below decks. The water poured through every seam and hole.

We lay at the landing all night. We got under way down stream early in the morning and about ten o'clock our old shaky craft turned its nose up the muddy current of the

Father of Waters. Every fellow that could get a string lowered his coffee can for a drink of water. The boys would smack their lips and say the dirt in it tasted like Wisconsin dirt. Reaching Lake Providence that evening it was decided to transfer three companies to another boat, as our boat was overloaded and threatening to sink. Companies B., C. and F. went ashore to follow on the next boat. We pushed on with a more comfortable feeling. The next day I had a turn of fever as did a hundred others, on account of sleeping in wet clothes. I fixed that after a while with a dose of quinine and brandy, put up for me by the steward. Our vessel was old and rickety and made slow headway.

The faithful old craft panted, toiled and groaned its onward way toward the north star. We laid up alongside the shore two nights. And except to stop now and then for wood, there was no excitement. We stopped one night opposite a big peach orchard. Got peaches and chickens enough to make us nearly all sick and confiscated sixty mules. There are few towns along on either side and the forests come right down to the shore and look as wild and dark as they did when the French Jesuits visited the river two hundred years ago. Helena is not so far up as we had hoped to go. Soon as the remainder of our regiment gets here we expect to be sent to Memphis, Tenn., a hundred miles farther north.

We are camped under some big trees close to the shore, and we like it much better than on the miserable Yazoo. We can buy stuff here for less money than at Vicksburg. I should judge there were 15,000 troops at this place. They expect Gen. Price to attack this place any day. He is a foxy old war dog and may pop up any day. Let him come, he won't catch our commander Gen. Prentiss asleep. They say Prentiss always sleeps with one eye open.

While I am writing William Thomas of Mondovi, is sitting on a bench beside me. The poor fellow is dead home sick. He looks very bad. He watches the steam boats passing up the river and wishes he might get a pass to go home on one of them.

Mensus Bump came round awhile ago and treated us all to a cup of milk punch, that is milk and whisky. All the sick boys got some. It pretty near laid me out as it did a lot of others. It is a cold morning for this country and I dropped my paper and went over by the fire, and the heat made me dizzy. Dan Hadley and Obe Hilliard said it was better than quinine and they just as leave take some every day.

Well father, what do you think of the war anyway? It seems the rebs are trying to make an alliance with France, and make Napoleon Dictator, or something. Anyway to get the French to help. The South ain't licked yet, and we may be in for a lot of trouble yet. We get the daily papers from Memphis, and so keep posted. Have you got a letter advising you of the check I sent you of forty dollars? A load of Butternuts, rebel prisoners, is just passing on the steamer Hope, bound for the north. They will get into some prison, get full rations, get strong and be exchanged for our boys that have been starved and unfit for service.

Father, I often think of the three hundred thousand Catalines, as you called them, that brought on this war just because they could not run this government in the interest of slavery. It is only slave holders that fill the offices in the southern army. It is the poor white trash that even the darkies look down upon that fill the ranks and take the brunt of the fight. Poor devils, they don't know that they are fighting for a rich aristocracy that despises them.

I don't know about your taking that Pierce darkey to work for you. Some of them are the worst liars and thieves in the world. Be careful. [p. 55]We soldiers have lots of dealings with them. They seem nice enough to me and honest, but it is claimed they are awfully dishonest. When they are faced with the facts of their lying they put on the most pitiful look of innocence. I am trying to find excuses for them when I remember what you told me about them. I don't doubt but the whites would be liars and thieves too if they had been slaves for two hundred years. Whatever I think I won't side with the boys that are abusing them. This I do notice, the boys that I think the best and like the best say the least against the blacks.

Hereafter direct to Cairo. Mail will be forwarded from there.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

August 6, 1863

August 6, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 6, 1863Dear Father:

I wrote to you but three days ago, but I am glad for an excuse to write to you again. I got your last letter with the extract from the New York Tribune enclosed. I am not surprised that old Greely, as the boys call him, would have something to say about the New York riot. He feels terribly because of the late riots against the negroes in New York City.

I showed the extract to Dwyer, an Irishman in our company, a real good fellow, and one of my best friends. He said O'Connell himself could not make the Irish like "Nigers." He said, when O'Connell talked to the Irish in Ireland about Liberty, it was all right, but it was asking too much for O'Connell or anybody else to fight for the liberty of the nigger. He did blame the Irish though, for their part in burning the schools and asylums of the blacks in New York City. The boys had been talking this thing over a good deal since the New York riot. It must have hurt Wendell Phillips dreadfully after all the handsome things he has said about O'Connell and English oppression of the Irish nation to see them so bitterly opposed to the freedom of the slave.

I told Dwyer I didn't see how he or any other Irishman could feel kindly toward the south, that had never made them welcome nor had they treated any foreign people as kindly as we had done in the north. Their papers were always sneering at the Dutch or Hessians, the Jews and the Irish.

Dwyer said, the Irish don't hate the Nigger because he is black but because he won't fight. The Irish like a fighter. Dwyer has always cursed Lincoln because he was so slow to enlist the blacks in the army. I don't know but he was right. Lincoln seems to be a good man but he is slow. Things seem to be in a terrible jangle at Washington. There is so much jealousy among the officers and backbiting to Lincoln that the poor fellow don't know who to trust. The Vicksburg papers up to the time of the surrender, were always sneering at the Yankees and saying that if the South was beaten it would be owing to the foreign hirelings, that we were bringing in by the ship load, to fill up our ranks. Most of their spite is against the Germans, whom they call Hessians.

Well, so much for the comments in the Tribune extract you sent me. I have little to say about our doings here. Most of us are sick. We simply lay round and sleep and dream and gaze out on the big river that never stops but flows on and on toward the gulf. Just below our camp is a big flat boat loaded with ice. They came from the Ohio. They ask five cents for enough ice to cool a drink of water. There is a lot of cows in the edge of town and the boys milk them every day. Thompson Pratt and Obed Hilliard brought me some milk the day before yesterday. I bought a pound of [p. 56]ice and cooled it and with hard tack for bread I had a royal good meal.

Say, how are things at home Of course you are having venison these days and plenty of trout. Give old Prince a good hug for me. Dear old dog. I often think of the days and nights we hunted together. I never feared anything the darkest night that ever blew when out in the hills with old Prince snugged up in the blanket beside me. He has been the dearest friend of my boyhood and if anything happens to him bury him on the big hill and I will mark his grave if I come back. Tell mother never mind sending the butter. It's too fearful hot. There is a rumor that a lot of our regiment will be sent to the hospitals at Memphis soon. I hate to think that I may be one of that number. I think I am feeling better since the weather got cooler. Love to all,

Your son,

CHAUNCEY

February 28, 1863

Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, February 28, 1863

Dear sister: Your letter came in due time. It was handed me yesterday by the orderly as I came off guard. You rate me pretty low on composition and spelling but I mean to do better. Yes, I sent my clothes the day before we left Madison. I directed the box in care of Giles Cripps at Trempealeau. Father will have to get it from there. It weighs about 100 pounds. You will know my knapsack by my name stamped on one of the shoulder straps. Barney Bull has a coat in my bundle, all the rest belongs to the Mondovi boys out side of my knapsack. Father should leave their clothes at Yankee Town, (Gilmanton), where their folks will get them. I hope father wont wear my coat. I hate to see a civilian in soldiers dress. If I ever get back it will do me for some time, and if I dont get back give it to some poor soldier in the neighborhood. You did not say anything of my letter written on the eve of leaving Madison for Caire, Illinois. Of course you have it by this time. The sweethearts and wives of the boys from all parts of the state swarmed about the station to say good bye. There were lots of mothers and fathers too. The sweethearts smiled but the mothers and wives shed tears. I saw a few tears in the eyes of some of the married men. It made me think of the song I have heard father sing so many times. Here are two lines: "Go watch the foremost ranks in danger's dark career, Be sure the hand most daring there, has wiped away a tear". There were a thousand handkerchiefs fluttering in the air waving final adieus as the two long trains bearing the 25th. slowly pulled out of the station to begin their journey south. I don't remember what I wrote you about Cario. They say it is a bit like Cario in Egypt. Our Cario has more rats I'll bet, and it is built right in the forks of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. I don't like the people. They are half rebs, never look at a soldier nor speak in passing. There are a lot of steamers tied up here loaded with supplies for Vixburg and other points occupied by our troop.

The site of our camp here in Columbus K. Y. is fine. We can see for miles up and down the river. We are on a high bluff 200 feet higher than the town. The water is not good tho and we drink cold coffee to quench thirst. No enemy can approach us by water and on the landside we throw out pickets every day in a half moon circle touching the river above and below town, so we cannot be taken by surprise from the land. We have a lot of heavy cannon behind strong breast works overlooking the river so that no hostile fleet could reach us. On the land side there seems little danger of attack. Half the people in this part of Kentucky are Union and we would have plenty of warning of any rebel
[p. 25]
advance. I have been on picket duty in the woods some two miles from town twice since coming here. My beat was supposed to keep moving constantly back and forth for two hours at a stretch.

A comrad would be on a similar beat either side of me but one was not allowed to have any conversation with comrades on guard. Say I want to tell you its a lonesome job specially if the night is cloudy and dark. Its an awful good time to think of home and soft warm bed and all that. Then I would say to myself, what's the use. When the stars are shining I always look for the dipper and the north star. They are both a little lower down here than in the north but they look just as friendly as they did in Wisconsin. There is a sort of companionship in the stars when one is alone. I remember how I used to look up at the stars when I was out trapping alone with old Prince, over Traverse Creek or in Borst Valley. The barking of foxes and the snort of passing deer would keep me awake for hours. Old Prince and I slept under the same blankets with nothing over us but the sky.

Ah, but those delightful days are no more and I am here in far away Kentucky. Confound it there goes the drum. It means put on your belts and get out for drill.

Good bye,

CHAUNCEY.

January 6, 1863

January 6, 1863

Hd. Quarters 25th Regt. Wis.

Dear sister: I am sure you would
[p. 20]
smile if you could get a view of Co. G. as I can see them from where I sit. You would say, "What a writing school." I can count more than 40 of the boys writing letters to their mothers or their girls. Mostly to their girls. Its easy to tell, if a fellow is writing to his mother he don't squirm and cover his paper when some guy looks over his shoulder. There is a lot of such teasing. The only way is to get away up in the top bunks out of reach and hold their portfolios on their laps for a desk. I came off guard this morning after the coldest night of the winter. My beat was long side the railroad track on a high bank where the wind cut me from all sides. I set my gun down and run back and forth to keep from freezing my toes. The snow sifted in the path and kept it soft and mealy. The Legislature had some extra work at the capitol last night. I could see the light at the top of the dome until after midnight.

No pay yet though they keep promising it. Went to the Episcopal church last Sunday. Say, don't they [...] style though? I compared them in my mind to our little bunch in that two by four school house in Gilmanton. The preacher came out in a black dress and talked about things I couldn't understand, but the music was nice when I came away. If I was any better in heart, it was because of the music and not for anything the preacher said. A lot of the boys celebrated Christmas and New Year to their sorrow. Some of them were put in jail up town and two of them are there yet. Nearly every other house between here and the Capitol sells beer and by the time the lovers of grog get into town they are full to running over with, `When Johnny comes marching home." There was close to a mutiny of the two regiments here the other day because so many of the boys had been arrested and jailed in the city. The 30th. regiment and several companies of the 25th came out without officers formed in ranks swearing they would go up and storm the city of Madison, if necessary and release their comrades in jail. Feeling ran so high that I took my place in the ranks without much heart in it to tell the truth. I was glad when our officers came around and explained that we were mutineers and in violation of the rules of war and that we should disband.

I had no pity in my heart for the fellows in jail and I was glad for an excuse to sneak back to head quarters. We have some good fellows in our company who are devils when they are in drink. And we have about four who are devils drunk or sober. While I am writing these, the boys are singin Dixie in a great chorus. This awful weather makes us hanker for the warmer south and, since there is no hope of home. All seems quiet on the Potomac.

I see by the papers that the church are urged to pray for the end of the war. They have had several spells at this and the battles have been harder and the slaughter greater. The churches south have been doing the same thing. It would seem that God ought to pity the slave and help our side, but will he? I know what father would say. He would quote Napolson, who said, "put your trust in well drilled troops and keep your powder dry." I remember the last time I heard him say this, when Elder Morse was visiting us and they were talking about the wickedness of slavery about which they both agreed. Father disputed the Elder's opinion that God presided over the movements and affairs of earth. He cited slavery and the wicked wars of the earth and the crimes of the liquor traffic as being inconsistent with the character of a just God. Elder Morse agreed with father this far, that they were not in harmony with the Divine plan, but were tolerated for some reason not given to man to
[p. 21]
know.

Have father tell Elder Morse, I thank him for his kind words. His son Henry is about and able to eat his rations every day. I hope you wont sell your land as you talk of doing. I got a letter from G -- the other day and answered it. He thinks McClellon is a traitor. Lots of us think the same. Our Captain is a wise man and he says McClellon has been waiting and waiting when he should have been marching and fighting. I am awful sorry that Freemont was set down on by Lincoln. I am with Freemont as many of the boys are. I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot go free. Freemont wanted to set them free as fast as we came to them. I am disappointed in Lincoln. I remember a talk father had with uncle Ed. Cartwright, who was blaming the war on the Abolitionists. It made father mad and he talked back pretty hot. He said I have a boy who wants to go to the war and I would give his life as cheerfully as Abraham offered his son if necessary that the slaves might be freed. Father meant all right though it seemed hard, but I love him all the more for it, although I suppose I am the boy he meant for the sacrifice. We are all anxious to go south, though none of us that I know are anxious to get shot for any cause. Direct as before to Camp Randall. Love to all, mother father and brothers.

Your brother.

CHAUNCEY.

July 1, 1863

July 1, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 1, 1863Dear Father:

It has been some time since writing you last, but we have had a busy time coming and going and maneuvering, that is our regiment has been on the move for more than a week and no chance to write a letter nor to mail one. A week ago yesterday our regiment got orders to go to Cypress Bend, on the Arkansas side the river 200 miles up the river to capture or diperse a band of guerrillas that were firing from ambush along the shore on the passing steamers, trying to kill the pilots and cripple the boats. They have even fired into Hospital boats that were flying hospital flags. Every able bodied man in our regiment, about six hundred, were ordered into line, guns and ammunition inspected. The next morning we boarded the Dexter, a Mississippi boat that reached nearly across the Yazoo River, and were soon pushing down toward the father of waters. The idea of riding on the Mississippi again and heading toward home made us happy. And we figured on having a good drink soon as our boat touched the muddy waters of the big river that we somehow loved just because it flowed by our homes.

We had just been paid off for two months and the boys had a good fill of oysters and store crackers. I only got six dollars though. I had drawn some extra clothing and my little thirteen dollars was cut to three dollars a month. It was so [p. 46]long ago I got the clothes, I began to think the clothes were forgotten. Uncle Sam's Paymasters have a good memory. Just as I am writing this the Silver Moon, a Yazoo steamer, is passing up the Yazoo toward Haine's Bluff. She has a Calliope and it is playing Nellie Gray. She is loaded with hard tack and bales of hay clear to the water line and her half naked deck hands lying around on the hay bales look like so many alligators.

She gave us the right of way and we pushed on down this river whose water though clear and tempting we dared not drink. The boys kept cracking away at the alligators that lay on logs and drift wood on the sand banks. The scaly things would flounder into the water and sink out of sight. Some of them looked to be seven or eight feet long, more of them were three or four feet.

We reached Young's Point in the evening and waited there all night for some cavalry and a battery that was to accompany us. We were just out of cannon range of Vicksburg. I lay on the hurricane deck of our boat and with my head bolstered up on my knapsack so I could see. I watched the fire of our gun boats in sight of us down the river as broadside after broad-side was poured into the city. Every discharge would come up the river like a great roll of thunder., It may seem strange to you but all the first part of that night I was thinking more of home than of the things going on around me. It seemed as if the shells from the mortars went up into the clouds a half mile and then would drop in a circle of fire into the city of Vicksburg. They looked like meteors only their track was red and they would often burst before they reached the ground. I don't think I got to sleep before midnight and when I woke up the sun was shining.

July 15, 1863

July 15, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke and Warren Cooke, July 15, 1863Dear Brother:

I have for many days thought of writing to you, first because I like you and second because you are not writing to me as often as you ought.

Since the surrender of Vicksburg on the fourth of this month there has been all sorts of rumors as to our future movements. The late battles won by the army of the Potomac along with the victory over Pemberton here at Vicksburg. somehow makes us boys feel that the end of the war is near. O, if you could have seen and heard what I have these ten days past. Pemberton had nearly 30 thousand all surrendered to Grant on the 4th of this month. And they were glad to be prisoners and paroled to go to their homes. They cursed the war and called it a nigger war. I heard lots of them say that had never owned a nigger, that they were fooled and wished they had stayed at home. The bombardment of Vicksburg the night of the surrender was fearful. The clouds above the city looked blood red as if they were all on fire. The Thunder of the cannon for two or three nights and the rumor of surrender kept us awake. We, that were rather on the sick list with chills [p. 49]and fever, were pretty anxious at the reports that the rebel General Johnson was daily preparing to attack us. Since the surrender the troops by brigades and divisions have gradually withdrawn. All this means that the danger of attack is past.

While I am writing this letter our scouts have brought in word that the rebel General Johnson has been bagged with 65000 troops. Some of the boys are wild over the news, others simply smile and say it's nothing but a false rumor. Whether it is true or false you will know by the papers before this reaches you.

Some of the boys were down to the city of Vicksburg to-day. They said It was a pretty nice place, but it was badly shot up. Nearly half the town had been burned and the streets were torn up by our shells. It costs twenty dollars in confederate money to get a meal, and one dollar in U. S. Greenbacks. The darkies were filling up the town and grinning and showing their white teeth at every corner. Grey headed niggers and pretty quardoons begged the soldiers for money and blessed Abraham Lincoln for sending them south to make them free. Most of the boys hate the blacks and say hard things about them. I never can forget that father told me at Mr. Fuller's place when I got in the wagon. after that awful good dinner. to go to Alma. You remember it brother W. He said, if you ever get a chance, my boy, take good aim and shoot twice to free the black while shooting once for the Union.

I don't dare say anything like this to the boys, because they would laugh at me. But I have read enough to know that Phillips was right and Garrison was right and he thought as they did. And I thought for days after going to I a Crosse of the tears I saw in his eyes as he asked me always to remember the slave.

Well, brother, to change the subject, have you killed any prairie chicks this summer? It is nearly time for pigeons again. Good Lord, how I hope I can be with you to eat speckled trout and prairie chicks his fall.

I am writing this upon my back. The doctor gave me something for my fever that makes my head whirl. When he came to my tent this morning I asked him if I was very sick. When I told him I was seventeen he said, you ought to have been thrashed and kept at home two years longer. I told the doctor that he looked sick himself, and he admitted he was not feeling well. (This doctor died within ten days of the date of this letter.)

Say, how are the neighbors coming? How does Geo. Cartwright behave? Does he and uncle Ed. cock up twice as much hay as you and father? What does Edward Cass busy himself about? Has he and father got that big field fenced in yet? And Maggie C, is she as pretty and haughty as ever? How does Jim Pierce prosper this summer? Has he commenced that brick house he never tired of telling about? I sometimes wish lightning had struck that man, father then might have got a better farm. Pierce took father in just because he was too honest. Do the cows break in the fields any this summer? Does mother make lots of cheese and butter? Great heavens, what butter and cheese mother could make. When those people from St. Louis came through there and praised mother's bread and butter I thought they were fooling, but now I know they were telling the truth. Well, I have got some soft bread to-day noon. some biscuit I bought of a settler. And I have some butter I paid 50 cents for and some coffee. Don't you think I have a first rate supper? Just like the little boy in the third reader who was happy over his porridge alone when he discovered that everything else of the meal had been stolen.

Love to yourself, father, mother and sister D.

Your brother,

CHAUNCEY.

July 2, 1863

July 2, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 2, 1863Dear Father;

We were deployed a good half mile in line soon as we got ashore in a grove of timber that lay between the river bank and the mansion of the planter and the village of negro huts that flanked the big house on the right and left. This plantation worked nearly 500 slaves we were told. The mansion was built on piers like most homes of the South, ten or twelve feet above the ground; the basement surrounded by a lattice and serving as kitchen and laundry and living place for the house servants. We had orders to make a careful examination of the place as it was thought the guerrillas we were after had made this place their headquarters. I was among the first to reach the house. There were no whites in sight but I saw a few scared looking black faces who got out of sight as we came near. Some of the boys had talked with the blacks who denied that there had been any rebels quartered there. We knew the negroes were lying. We found where there had been beds and lots of ash heaps where there had been camp fires and the tracks of horses and scattering corn fodder. Five or six of us went to the stairway and opened the door leading on to the gallery. Just as we stepped in the wide hall, three women, an old grey haired lady and two young ladies came up to us and asked us not to come into the house. The oldest one pleaded pitifully, wringing and rubbing her hands first one and then the other, and then reaching out her hands toward us as far as she could urging us to stay out, all the while crying and at times screaming as if her heart was breaking. She said her mother was sick and likely to die and begged us to go away. I never felt meaner in my life. The Co. K. man who did the talking told her we had orders to search the house for rebels and we had to do it. He tried to say something by way of excuse. One of the boys pushed by the girls and opened a closet in the wall.

The girl jumped into the door and with tears streaming down her face begged him to stay out. There is nothing in here she said but the wardrobe and relics of my dying mother. She took him by the arm and pushed him away and closed the door. The house was soon crowded with soldiers and the door of the closet opened and examined but we found nothing but dresses and cloaks and bonnets and blankets. I got ashamed and wished that I was out of it. I went back into the big hall and found a book case. I stuck Longfellow's Hiawatha in my pocket and Ed Coleman and Elder Harwood (now National Chaplain of the G. A. R.) took turns with me reading it on our return to Snyder's Bluff. When I went outside I found several buildings on fire. The orders had been not to set any fires, but nobody cared and nobody would tell. Suddenly a report came in that a body of rebels had been seen by our cavalry some four miles inland. We hurriedly got into line and for two hours marched back through the deepest, darkest forest I ever saw. All at once there came the ring of rifles on every side. The ranks were broken and men supposed to be brave as lions dodged right and left, while others fired their guns out of pure fright with no enemy in sight. It had turned out that we had surprised a company of rebel cavalry who were boiling coffee for an afternoon lunch and after emptying

their carbines at our cavalry scouts and giving us a good surprise they retreated in every direction through the woods. It was lucky for us after all. We had just pulled ourselves together for a forward march when scouts came galloping up with the news that 4,000 rebels under the command of Marmaduke was flanking us on both sides and had already planted cannon on the cross roads between us and the river. In less time than I am telling you we were counter marching at double quick. We made four cross roads to the big plantation and at every one of them we expected to be raked by rebel cannister and grape. Before we reached the last cross road, shells from our gun boats were screaming over our heads and bursting in our rear, scattering death amongst the rebs as it seemed to us letting us get back into the open of cotton field of the big plantation with not a man lost.

But it was music to hear those shells ripping through the tree tops on their mission of death. We knew it meant our salvation and death to the rebels. When we got back to the big plantation we found nearly all the buildings on fire save the mansion alone. The barns, gin house, saw mill, and immense drying sheds, were all ablaze sending up columns of black smoke. The cavalry that followed us told us that we had barely crossed the last cross road when the rebels planted a battery not fifty rods from our line of retreat so as to rake us at the crossing with cannister. There is no doubt our gun boats that kept up a rapid fire over our heads was a mighty lucky thing for us. The rebels had three men to our one and knew every road and vantage point but for our brass war dogs they would have made it hot for us. We boarded our boats and with one gun boat for convoy, leaving two at the bend for protection to passing vessels reached our old quarters on the Yazoo yesterday.

Don't forget to send a paper now and then. You are right when you suppose it is hot down there. Dan hadley and Henry Morse are both on the sick list and about twenty-five others you don't know in the company. I am glad to hear that you have help for harvest. I hope mother won't need to go in the hay-field this summer nor rake up grain. It is too hard work and it don't seem right. I loaned all my stamps and I must hunt one to send this letter. Love to mother and the rest.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

July 25, 1863

July 25, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 25, 1863Dear Mother;

I feel just like writing you to-day. I am sitting in the shade of a big Cypress tree, on the banks of the Yazoo. Looking across the river I can see on some flood trash, two black things looking like alligators. They don't move and I am not sure. There is a pretty spring just below where I sit and a sign over it which says, "Don't drink this water, poison." It is as big as the spring at the head of our spring and as pure looking. It seems strange that we cannot drink out of the springs here that look just as they do in Wisconsin. Some of the boys don't mind the sign. Some that are burning up with fever and thirst manage to stagger down here and fill up with water and go back to their tents and die. Say mother, what would you think if I should say I have some times wished when the fever made me so hot I could hardly stand it that I could go to sleep and never wake up till the war was over. Now this may sound kind of weak for a soldier.

But I am no coward, mother. I don't come from that kind of stock. I remember how you put the gun at the head of your bed when father was gone to Fountain City, ready to use it if Indians should come or wild animals attack the cattle. And father came home and he would pat you on the back and say "you are just the girl for a pioneer's wife. I remember these things mother, and under all circumstances I shall never forget that my father and mother were brave people.

I wrote brother Warren the day before getting your letter so I have delayed answering yours. I am a great deal better from chills and a sort of intermittent fever. I have been taking quinine which seems to have broken the chills. I am thankful it is not that other kind of fever that is killing off the boys so fast. 23 men have lately died out of our regiment. There are only about 100 men out of the regiment fit to do duty.

Thank goodness we are about done with this part of the south. The report now is that our entire Brigade will go to Memphis and on up the Tennessee where a northern soldier can live. Two regiments of our brigade have already left, the 3rd Minn. and the 40th Iowa. The 27th Wis. and our regiment will leave soon and then hurrah for a healthier climate. The rebel Gen. Johnson and his Butternut band have skedadled to parts unknown. Of course you have heard of the retreat of Gens. Lee and Bragg, and of the riot of the mob in New York City and the burning of negro asylums and school houses. That mob uprising looked had for the north. It was a Democratic crowd in sympathy with the south. Cost what blood, time and treasure it may, the Union will yet win out.

We were paid off the other day, and to my surprise nothing was taken out for extra clothes drawn. Maybe they will take it out later. We got full pay, $26.

This makes twice we have drawn pay at this place. You ask what general it was that ordered that killing retreat for retreat it was, from Satartia to Haines Bluff? It was General Kemball, a Potomac General, who is now acting General for our corps. We are not in love with him, and some of the boys say he will get shot by his own men the first fight we get into. It is time for roll call and as I am not excused I must quit and go back to camp.

Love to father and the rest,

Your Son,

CHAUNCEY.

July 28, 1863

July 28, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 28, 1863Dear Mother:

Your last letter at hand. There is no medicine like a letter from home. Let me tell you mother it does a fellow a lot of good. I am glad you are having such success with the bees. It makes my mouth water for biscuit and honey. I wish you would not take so many chances of getting stung. You ought to wear a veil of cheese cloth over your face. Don't think so much of me. I am all right. We have a plenty to eat. By paying a good round price we can get almost anything good to eat. I wish you would think more of yourself. When I see you in my sleep working in the hayfield helping to get up the hay it troubles me. I suppose as you say that help is hard to get and may be there is no other way. I am careful you may be sure what I eat. Our dainties we get of the sutler, and it is nearly all in cans. I eat a lot of oysters and I find them good for me. That deer that father killed must have come in good play. Don't spoil your relish for it by constantly thinking of me. I told you I am all eight. When I get a dish of oysters I always think how fond father is of them.

You say they are going to get rich in Bennet Valley where father

bought that forty for me. Well I am happy to know that. It may be they will have use for a part of it when the next recruiting officer comes that way. Nor will he, likely as not, waste his eloquence in trying to coax them to enlist as J. A. Brackett did when I enlisted. He will like as not tell them to furnish so many men or stand a draft.

This war ain't over yet. There may be a lot of money paid out for substitutes yet. Just think of it, they are paying as high as a thousand dollars for substitutes in many of the states. It all means that people are getting tired of the fussy way the war is being carried on. If the slaves had been declared free right at the start just as father said and put into the ranks to fight the war might have ended long ago. I see by the papers there are fifty thousand freedmen under arm and they are doing good service. The poor black devils are fighting for their wives and children, yes and for their lives, while we white cusses are fighting for as Capt. Darwin calls an idea, I tell the boys right to their face I am in the war for the freedom of the slave. When they talk about the saving of the Union I tell them that is Dutch to me. I am for helping the slaves if the Union goes to smash. Most of the boys have their laugh at me for helping the "Niggers" but Elder Harwood and Ed Colemen and Julius Parr and Joel Harmon and Chet Ide, the last two of Mondovi, tell me I am right in my argument.

I am sorry father lost that deer. He should take old Prince to help him next time. It is too bad to wound a deer for the wolves to catch and eat up in that way.

We have fresh beef all the time since the surrender. These cane brakes are full of half wild cattle, and they are fat as butter.

I thank brother W. for sending me those stamps. I will send him a book when I get to Memphis. Mother, I wish you would send me a small package of butter by Lieut. MeKay, who is home on furlough for thirty days. I like John McKay. He is a good man. He is a good officer and fair to his men. His wife, I think, is in Modena, where he enlisted, You will see a notice of his arrival in the Alma Journal. For the can of butter you send I want you to reserve a ten dollar greenback for your own especial use out of the sum I send you. Good bye Dear Mother.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

June 11, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, June 11, 1863

Dear Sister:

Am in receipt of your last letter but an hour ago. You do write a good letter. So full of news, just the stuff for a brother in the war to read, and you tell things in such a good way. It's just like a story in a book. You are father's girl all over just as mother has often said. How I wish I could have some of the fish you tell of catching, only I don't like the fellow that took you home that time. He is nice looking and knows how to say pleasant things, but he is what our chaplain calls a roue. Look in the dictionary and see what roue means. I don't want my sister to keep company with a roue, if I understand the word. Let me tell you, my dear girl, most young men ain't as good as they ought to be. And I wish you would be more careful and mind me a little if you are older than I. But I must tell you of things here.

We had a dreadful march from Satartia to reach this place. It was a killing march. Our Division General was a coward, and the march began at sunrise and ended at ten o'clock that night. It was a retreat, a perfect rout. The rebel Johnson was supposed to be close in our rear with a body of cavalry and the orders were to press forward with all possible speed. Through great forests and corn fields without end standing above our heads, in the hottest sun I ever felt, the army became a regular mob, every man for himself. Men threw aside their coats and blankets their testaments and their shirts. Hundreds lay down in the corn rows, under the trees and on the banks of the creeks. Many of them in the faint of a sunstroke, others fanning themselves or cursing those in command. The constant roar of besieging mortar and cannon at Vicksburg grew louder and louder as we advanced. The ambulances and the ammunition and supply wagons that followed were full of men unable to march, long before night. You know that father always said I was mother's boy because I never was tired or never sick till I went into the army. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I had lost sight of every man of Company G, and was marching with a bunch of Indiana boys. I had divided the water with them I had in my canteen. I had thrown away a woollen shirt and torn my blanket in two and left a part of that to lighten my load. My cartridge box was the heaviest thing we had, every man was loaded with all the bullets
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he could carry, for we expected to need them. I was just about fainting with the heat when one of the Indiana boys said, "my boy you better lay down, your face is awful red." We were on the bank of a muddy creek. I walked away from the road up among the trees and after taking a drink from the creek I lay down in the shade of a tree with no one in sight and fell asleep. When I opened my eyes the sun was down and it was just getting dark. For a minute I didn't know where I was nor what had happened. Then the march and the mix-up of the day all came back to me. Here and there I could see through the woods the light of the camp fires. I went back to the road where I left my Indiana friends five hours before. I sat down while a battery of six guns went by, each drawn by six big horses. Then followed a rear guard of five or six hundred cavalry whose sabers and carbines clanged as they rode by. I knew if Johnson was so near, these cannon and cavalry would not be passing toward Vicksburg in this peaceful way. A straggling group of infantry followed the cavalry and I joined them. I had gone but a few steps when I felt a hand upon my shoulder. Turning to see who it was, what was my delight to see the Captain of my company, Captain Darwin, smiling upon me. Like myself he too was lost from the company. The Captain had never looked so good to me. He had laid down by the road like me, overcome by heat, and he was anxious to find the company. Until I found Captain Darwin I was ashamed to think that maybe I was the only one lost from the company. The Captain is a great big strong man and nice looking. And when I found the heat had played him out just as it had me I took courage. After calling at about a hundred camp fires and half as many regiments we found our company and our regiment. If there is a just God he will punish the man that ordered that awful march. It was useless and uncalled for. We hear that the General has been arrested and will be tried by Court Marshal. Every soldier on that horrid march hopes he will be punished.

The air is sickening with the stench of decaying flesh. Mississippi is full of cattle running wild in the cane brakes, and the boys are shooting great, beautiful steers in sight as they would rabbits, leaving every thing but the choicest parts on the ground to smell and stink. Ten miles from here the people in Vicksburg are starving for beef to eat and where we are camped the air is poisoned with the decaying flesh of animals more than we can eat. What a world this is. I am only giving you a brief sketch of the important things. Just think of the horror of 50,000 people with half enough to eat, with no rest nor sleep, stormed at with shot and shell, night and day in the city of Vicksburg. They have dug holes under their houses and in the bluffs and on the river side to get away from the shot and bursting shell of Union guns. They can't get anything more to eat outside the city so they eat horses and mules to keep alive. O, but the poor wretched whites that let the rich slave holders drag them into this war. The negroes tell us the rich white man in the south looks down on the poor white trash who has no slaves, as much as he does on the black man. And the common soldier in the rebel army is awful ignorant. There ain't one in ten that can read or write, and they think the Dutch boys in our army were hired in Germany and came over just to fight them. I have just been notified by the Orderly Sargeant that I am to go on picket duty to-morrow and to put my gun in order. The reports that we get every hour from the pickets that men are being shot reminds us that we are not in sleepy old Columbus, Kentucky any more, where we could go to sleep without danger, except from
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the officer of the guard. I'll let you know in a few days how nice it is to do picket duty in the cane brakes of Mississippi within gun shot of the enemy's line. I haven't the least fear of danger, sister and I am feeling real good after a two days' rest of racket and roar of big guns that put me to sleep nights and waken me in the morning. There is an army of some 15,000 men around us and between here and Vicksburg. Love to all, father, mother and the boys.

P. S. -- There is a rumor at this moment that we are to counter march for Satartia to-morrow. I'll bet it is a false rumor.

Your brother,

CHAUNCEY.

June 15, 1863

Chauncey Herbert Cooke, June 15, 1863

Dear father:

I sent sister D. a letter some days ago and promised to tell her something of picket duty close to the enemy's line, next time I wrote. I made some notes in my memorandum every evening so I enclose them.

June 10th
6 o'clock P. M. Have just come in from the picket line where I have been for four hours during the day, from ten to twelve this morning and from four to six this afternoon. Will go on again to-night at 10 o'clock for two hours and again at four o'clock in the morning until six.

It has been a blistering hot day, but I have kept in the shade of some great trees most of the time. My beat is about as far as from the house to the creek, on a ridge, something like the little hill behind the house. The soldier whose place I took this morning, belonged to the Jersey Zouaves, told me it would be nice during daylight, but to look out to-night. He said he had seen the glint of a gun barrel last night in the edge of the cane brake. He advised me to keep my eyes peeled and stay as much as possible in the shadow of the trees. I asked him how I could do that and obey orders to keep pacing his beat. He said I don't give a damn for orders when I am alone here at midnight, and the officer of the guard asleep in his tent miles from here. One thing he said, you will hear a lot of hogs grunting in the cane brakes. Maybe they are hogs and maybe they ain't. Some of the boys have been shot by those hogs, so look out. These Jersey Zouaves are supposed to be dare devils, simply afraid of nothing. They wear fancy uniforms covered with yellow braid and all sorts of yellow stripes. The rebel soldiers hate these Zouaves and try to shoot them wherever they can. They are toughs picked up from the prisons and jails of the cities. Nothing happened worth mentioning during the day. From my beat I could see the Yazoo River and miles of corn fields on the west now tramped down and ruined. On the east where the enemy line extends are deep forests and dense cane brakes. All day long hundreds of men, yes, thousands were chopping down the trees, felling them toward the enemy, and sharpening the limbs so that they would be hindered and at the mercy of our guns if they tried to charge our lines.

Columns of smoke from burning buildings fills the sky, and this afternoon a south wind brought the smell of smoke from the big cannon that keep up their awful roar about Vicksburg.

June 8, 1863

June 8, 1863

 Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, June 8, 1863
Dear father and mother: I've seen some tough hours the last three days, but am feeling pretty well at this writing. Every night the last three or four we have been laying on our arms, expecting the bugle call to fall in for battle. The nights are hot and sultry and we lay with nothing but the sky for covering. You know how warm it is in Wisconsin in June but O, Lord it is nothing to Mississippi. Corn with you is about six inches high. Here it is four feet higher than a man's head. I never saw such big corn. While we lay at Satartia the boys went wild raiding and foraging the country for anything they could eat or wear or destroy, and it was all right, for every white man and woman was ready to shoot or poison us. The negroes were our only friends and they kept us posted on what the whites were doing and saying. Their masters told their slaves that the Yankees had horns that they eat nigger babies and that they lived in the north in houses built of snow and ice and that the Yankee soldiers were fighting to take the niggers back north where they would freeze to death It is a fright what stories the whites tell their slaves. The younger ones know better and laugh when they speak of it, but some of the real black ones just from Africa look nervous and scared when the boys crowd around them to tease and play tricks on them. They seem to know what the boys want. They bring in chickens, turkeys, eggs, molasses, sugar corn pones, smoked meat and honey. The boys don't treat them right. They cheat them out of a lot and their excuse is they stole the stuff from their white masters. The poor black creatures never get mad but just smile and say nothing. The day before we left Satartia some of our boys raided a big plantation, took everything in sight and came into camp with a mule team and wagon loaded with a fancy piano. They put the piano on board a steamboat and blindfolding the mules which were wild, turned them loose in camp. It was a crazy thing to do. There was some bee hives in the wagon full of honey and bees. The mules run over some tents nearly killing a lot of soldiers and scattering bees and boxes along the way. It was fun all right for some of the boys got badly stung.

June 8th. -- We have been resting on our arms all day awaiting a report from couriers who are watching
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the rebel General Johnson. He has a big force and his plan seems to be to cut off our march to Haines Bluff where we would be in touch with the main union army. In the afternoon we were ordered in line as were all the regiments of the three brigades. We were told the rebel army was moving our way and to be prepared at any moment.

June 9th. -- We lay upon our arms all night. It was not a good night to sleep. We expected every hour an order to fall in and retreat to Haines Bluff. It came at day break. We had scarcely time to make coffee and fry hard tack. Mounted orderlies with clanging sabers were rushing about with orders from headquarters. They would spring from their saddles leaving their horse in charge of a black servant, who always met them hat in hand at the Colonel's tent. Since daybreak there has been a fearful booming of cannons toward the south. All sorts of rumors are flying about. One is that Johnson has jumped in on our flank at Snyder's Bluff with his army and another report that Grant has stormed the city of Vicksburg under cover of all his big guns.

If nothing happens will write in a day or two.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

June, 1863

June, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, June, 1863
Dear father:

Since my last letter we have moved our position to within eight miles of Vicksburg. Yesterday eleven

regiments of Burnside's corps landed. The old fellow himself with his well known side whiskers came also. His men think he is pretty near a god. The hills and valleys for miles and miles are literally white with tents, and the music of bands from morning till night is ringing in our ears. I think it would be safe to say there are not less than twenty-five thousand tents within a circumference of eight miles. Clouds of dust from moving troops fill the air in every direction. Several batteries of artillery are just passing, six to eight big horses to each gun, and the men riding on the cassions are breathing a constant smudge. They don't have to walk, that is one thing in their favor, but I don't think I would like the battery service. Rumor is still in the air that the Rebel General Johnson is maneuvering to cut his way through to help General Pemberton in Vicksburg. That is the reason for so many batteries and infantry coming here and taking positions at this time.

I am sure a hundred thousand rebels could not break our lines at this point. We have three lines of heavy fortifications with batteries every eighty rods. Several thousand spades are kept constantly busy strengthening the lines. Our regiment was out yesterday on spade duty. I suppose we did a lot of digging, but for my part I don't tthink I did more than an hour's work, and I am sure I worked as hard as anybody. It takes the darkies to dig. One hundred negroes will shovel as much dirt as a thousand yankee soldiers, and sing plantation songs all the time. I went out a mile yesterday on the second line to see them work and hear them sing. Most of their songs are love songs, and it's always something about the cotton and the cane fields.

Rules are mighty strict and getting stricter every day. Our main work is to clean and polish up our guns, and to see that our cartridge and cap boxes are kept dry. We have inspection of arms every day at ten o'clock. Every gun is examined and woe to the soldier whose gun is not in order. We know not at what hour day or night the roll of the drum will call us into line of battle. I noticed in a copy of the Alma Journal you sent me that the people of Gilmanton, had been subscribing funds for the U. S. Sanitary commission. The object is a noble one and I am glad the Gilmanton folks have gone into their pockets to help it. By the way does Mr. G. say anything more about the hundred dollars he was to donate toward a private school in our valley when I enlisted? Don't say anything about it. If he gives it, all right. If he don't, all right. I don't care for his hundred dollars.

But of course as he volunteered to give it I never can think as much of him for lying about it. This sanitary commission is a soldier's home or stopping place, wherever a soldier happens to be, in any town in the north. He is given a bed and meals free of charge and medicine and care if he is sick. They are in the border states as well too, where our troops are in possession. If they are out of money they can stay weeks or months without cost until they get money or transportation to go on.

Of course the good people of Gilmanton, expect to celebrate the 4th of July and I expected to be with them when I enlisted but I shall not be there. I am glad to hear you say that my spelling is better than it was, although you don't find my writing any better. You say I don't write any plainer than Horace Greely. Well, there were some that managed to read Greely and what the world found in his writings makes me rather glad that my penmanship is no better than his.

I am glad that sister D. secured a school. She don't write me so often any more. What's the matter with her? If the folks at home could know what happy fools it made of us to get letters, they would write more of them and longer ones. I

have half a mind to confess that I have had the blues for a couple of days. I have had a touch of intermittant fever. Hundreds of the boys are under the care of the doctor for chills and fever. We are drinking water a little better than poison, and the niasma of this Yazoo River is getting in its work. The cannonading about Vicksburg is fiercer than ever. Last night the doctor gave me some infernal stuff for my fever that kept me awake. It must have been midnight before I got to sleep. I lay with the flap of my tent thrown back watching the shells from a hundred mortars, making a fiery half-circle as rising like a flaming rocket they circled and fell into the city, then followed the explosion. How can those people sleep? I should think the people of that city would be perishing for sleep. There has not been an hour the three weeks past but shells have been bursting in every part of the city. There was a bunch of about fifty rebs passed our camp yesterday taken at Vicksburg in a charge upon our works. They were put upon a boat at this landing for transportation to the north. They tell awful tales of hunger and want of sleep in Vicksburg. It takes half the people all the time to put out the fires started by our shells and they have no flour and only horse and mule meat.

They hinted that Jeff Davis was inside the lines. The story isn't be lieved, but everybody is talking about it. It pleases me that Elder Morse likes my letters. I told Henry what his father said about his writing and he merely laughed. Henry Morse is sick at this time with chills and fever. It is a common sickness on this Yazoo River.

There is talk that the city will be stormed from the entire ten miles of line this week. A victory here and the surrender of Pemberton would open the Mississippi to the gulf, then hurrah for Virginia and a healthier climate.

Send me some stamps as money won't buy stamps down here. Tell her an aunt Dinah or a Topsy black as to show her how to bake hoe mother when I come back I'll bring cake in the fire place and roast potatoes in hot ashes.

Love to all, Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

March 10, 1863

March 10, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, March 10, 1863
Dear parents: Rec'd a letter from home yesterday. It came to Columbus and was remailed to me at Cairo where our company had made a halt enroute with five other companies to Ft Donaldson. We stopped at Cairo to get our new guns. They are not here but we are going to wait for them. Cairo is not so muddy as when we came here in February. Still the water in the river is 12 feet higher than the prairie behind the town. The levee or filling is all that saves the town from drowning.

I am sorry you are so frightened when you read of the big guns and stacks of of cannon balls. I thought I had a more courageous mother. You know it is said that it takes ten ton of iron and lead to kill one soldier. Just think of that and take courage. They looked kind of ugly to me at first but now I never think of their being fearsome. We may have a different feeling about them when the time comes to use them. I stood guard last night on a government transport loaded with hard tack and sow belly (salt pork). I never saw so many rats, the boat was swarming with them. Of course they had plenty to eat. I counted more than a hundred rat holes in the cracker
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boxes, The day before we left Columbus a steamboat tried to pass down by the fort without landing. She was hailed and ordered to land. It was found that she was loaded from St. Lewis with medical supplies, mostly quinine for the rebel forces at Vicksburg. Of course the boat and its cargo were confiscated.

I am glad you like your new team so well. I hope they will be alright. I shall want a cutter to match them when I get back so I can step round a little.

Say mother, I had a question asked me yesterday by Elder Harwood, our Chaplain, that set me to thinking and stumped me so I couldn't answer. He asked me if I would go with him after the war. He said he wanted to get five or six good smart young boys that would go with him thru college, I answered that I could not say at once but would tell him later. Now mother, advise me what to say to him. The Elder is a minister of course, and altho he did not say, I suppose he meant to educate us for ministry. Mr. Harwood is a mighty fine man and I like to hear him talk. He preached the other Sunday in one of the churches, in Columbus, and in his prayer he thanked God for the freedom of the slaves. Some of the boys don't like this in him, but they are mostly the rough sort. I was in his tent when a colored woman brot his washing and he spoke to her as nicely as if he was a white woman. When she curtseyed and called him massa, he aid, "My poor woman I am not your massa, you have no massa any more, President Lincoln has made all the colored people free just like the white folks." The poor woman kept saying, "bress de Lord, bress de Lord, dis am de yeah of jubilee." When he handed her a fifty cent scrip to pay for the washing she looked at the picture of Lincoln in the corner of the bill, and putting to her mouth, kissed it. The Elder asked her what she did that for, and she answered, "O bress you honey, Massa Abraham Lincoln is de first and onliest Savior of us poor niggahs, an we des love dat face of his."

The order to go to Ft Donaldson, has been recalled and we are to go back in a day or so to Columbus, I am glad of anything to get us out of these rat hole barracks. They run over our faces at night and we cant sleep. When I remember the talks of Elder Morse and father about the wrongs of the slaves, I wish they might be in Columbus a few days and see and hear them as I have.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY. 

March 20, 1863

March 20, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, March 20, 1863
Dear mother: The six campanies of our Regt. ordered last week to Ft. Donaldson returned to Columbus last night after a week's stay at Cairo. Glad to get back to the top of the big bluff once more. We got here at midnight. There is an awful flood in the Ohio pouring into the Mississippi at Cairo from the melting snow above and the seething water is black as mud. The air of our camp is fine compared to the miasma of Cairo. A short time ago I read a letter in the Alma Journal purporting to be a dream by S. S. Cooke. It suited the boys to a dot. Some of them tho't it was a day dream with his senses and eyes wide open. It seems you are still having winter weather. Grass here is fine picking for cattle and there is a lazy summer like quietness in the air. The trees are leafing and the spring birds are here in force. I have seen several gray thrush in my strolls in the woods and strings of ducks and wild geese are passing north daily. Well if I was a wild goose I suppose I would go north too.

March 21st
After drill went out

in the edge of the woods. Its more peaceful and homelike than the racket of the camp. I can see the picket guard beyond me slowly pacing his beat. There is no enemy about but the discipline and regulations are just as rigid as they are in Georgia. No white man can come within the picket line except he has the pass word. A negro is allowed to come in. We are afraid that the whites may be spies, we know that the blacks are our friends. The health of the regiment is good save a few cases of bowel trouble. The boys call it the Kentucky Quick Step. There is more sickness among the poor lazy blacks. They are filling all the vacant houses and even sleeping under the trees, so anxious are they to get near de "Lincoln soldiers." They live on scraps and whatever they can pick up in camp and they will shine our shoes or do any camp work for an old shirt or cast off coat. They had a revival meeting at the foot of the bluff last night and such shouting and singing and moaning. It was Massa Lincoln was a savior that came after two hundred years of tribulation in the cotton field and cane. They had long known that something was going to happen because so many times their massa had visitors and they would tell the servants to stay in their cabins and not come to the "big house" until they was called. Then some of the house servants would creep round under the win dows and hear the white folks talking about the war and that the slaves were going to be free. And when the one that was sent to listen would come back and tell the others, they would get down on their knees and pray in whispers and give thanks to the Lord. Everthing with the darkies is Lord, Lord. Their faith that the Lord will help them was held out more than 200 years. I sometimes wonder if the Lord is not partial to the white race and rather puts it onto the black race because they are balck. We sometimes get terribly confused when we try to think of the law of Providence. This black race for instance, they can't talk ten words about slavery and old Massa and old Missus, but they get in something about "de blessed Lord and de lovely Jesus" and yet in this land of Washington, God has permitted them to be bought and sold like our cattle and our hogs in the stock yards, for more than 200 years. I listened for two hours this morning to the stories of a toothless old slave with one blind eye who had come up the river from near Memphis. He told me a lot of stuff. He said his master sold his wife and children to cotton planter in Alabama to pay his gambling debts, and when he told his master he couldn't stand it, he was tied to the whipping post stripped and given 40 lashes. The next night he ran to the swamps. The bloodhounds were put on his track and caught him and pulled him down. They bit him in the face and put out his eye and crushed one of his hands so he could not use it. He stripped down his pants and showed me a gash on one of his hips where one of the hounds hung onto him until he nearly bled to death. This happened in sight of Nashville, the Capitol of Tennessee. I told this to some of the boys and they said it was all bosh, that the niggers were lying to me. But this story was just like the ones in Uncle Tom's Cabin and I believe them. And father knows of things very much like this that are true.

I will write you again soon.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.
 

March 5, 1863

March 5, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, March 5, 1863
Dear folks at home: I sent you a letter a day or two ago and maybe I will hear from you soon. I hope I shall. I am well and we are hearing and seeing things and the days are not so heavy as at Madison. The weather is fine most of the time warm and clear.

We drill every day, do police work cleaning round the camp, and take a stroll now and then back in the country, far as the pickets will let us. We are really in the "sunny south." The slaves, contrabands, we call them, are flocking into Columbus by the hundred. General Thomas of the regular army is here enlisting them for war. All the old buildings in the edge of the town are more than full. You never meet one but he jerks his hat off and bows and shows the whitest teeth. I never saw a bunch of them together but I could pick out an Uncle Tom, a Quimbo, a Sambo, a Chloe, a Eliza or any other character in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The women take in a lot of dimes washing for the soldiers, and the men around picking up odd jobs. I like to talk with them. They are funny enough, and the stories they tell of slave life are stories never to be forgotten. Ask any of them how he feels and the answer nearly always will be, "Sah, I feels mighty good sah," or "God bress you massa, I'se so proud I'se a free man." Some are leaving daily on up river boats for Cairo and up the Ohio river. The Ohio has always been the river Jorden to the slave. It has been the dream of his life even to look upon the Ohio river.

The government transports returning from down river points where they had been with troops or supplies, would pick up free men on every landing and deliver them free of charge at places along the Ohio and upper Mississippi points.

The slaves are not all black as we in the north are apt to suppose. Some of them are quite light. Those used as house servants seem to have some education and don't talk so broad. A real pretty yellow girl
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about 18 was delivering some washing to the boys yesterday. She left her master and mistress in December and came to Columbus. In answer to the questions of the boys she said she left home because her mistress was cross to her and all other servants since Lincoln's emancipation. She said her mother came with her. One of the boys asked her why her father did not come with her. She said, "My father haint no colored man, he's a white man." When the boys began to laugh she picked up her two bushel baskets of clothes, balanced it on her head and went her way. That girl must have made fifty stops among the tents leaving her basket of clothes. I wonder if she heard the same dirty talk in each of them. The talk wasen't clean, but some of us who thot so just let it pass and kept still.

The talk now is our regiment will be divided, half sent up the Ohio to Ft. Donoldson the other half down the river. But this may be but one of many like rumors. There is always something in the air. Say but the picture before me as I write this is fine. I am sitting on the rampart of the Fort 200 feet above the river. The river, turbid and swollen from melting snows in Ohio and Indiana boils and swirls as its mighty current strikes the bluff almost directly below where I sit. A regiment of calvary has just landed from a government boat, and are climbing the bluff in a long winding column. Their horses are fresh and they come prancing along, the swords of their riders jingling, as if they were proud of their part in the scene. They don't know where they are going but doubtless to garrison some post farther south in the state. wrote Ben Gardner some time ago, am afraid he has fallen or taken prisoner. He has always been prompt to answer. His regiment is south of Memphis.

I am afraid you will think me given to much to frequent and long letters, but I remember fathers advice never to limit postage or letter paper expenses.

I should have mentioned that while the health of the boys is good in the main, we have some 20 in regimental hospital. Nathan Mann of our company and Orlando Adams of Mondovi are not expected to live. These poor fellows are victims of the measels and were sick with me in the hospital at St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Direct as before to Columbus.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

May 23, 1863

May 23, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, May 23, 1863
Dear mother: -- I sent you a long letter the other day but I forgot to mention my birthday. In fact I was not reminded of it until the day after but it has come and gone. I am sure if I had been at home my good mother would have reminded me of it in the shape of something good to eat. I don't know as I am any older feeling than I was two weeks ago and the future looks just the same. When I see an old person I never think of being that way myself. Maybe the Lord will perform a miracle and keep me young like the story in the old testament, but if he doesn't I am pretty well satisfied to be in this good old world. When I go back in the country, away from the sight of these big black cannons sticking their muzzles through the port holes of the fort, and look up to the green of the trees, and hear the hum of the bees and the twitter of the birds, and see the peaceful quiet of the country. It is hard to realize that the country is being torn to pieces in a big war.

Dear mother, I should have answered your last letter more promptly. I have written so many of late. I had almost forgotten I owed you one. You know it is said everything is far in war, and I know you will excuse me.

During the last four days we have been shading our tents with brush. I
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tell you we have them fixed up nice. Standing off a little ways one can hardly see the tents and it makes it so much cooler. Hot? Well I should remark. These May days in old Kentucky make everybody lawl but the darkies and nobody think of them. The heat pretty near drove us out of the tents in mid day. We take turns going over to the hospital to fan the sick boys and brush away the flies. The doctors say the younger ones are dying of homesickness much as anything.

Some of my chums and myself have been skylarking out in the country of late and we have visited a lot of pretty Kentucky homes. In a good many of them I am sure they hated to see us come in. They might be Union people but they hate to see us talking to their slaves and the soldiers were a little saucy where they thought they were not wanted. We would hunt the strawberry beds and eat them too. We would call for milk, butter, apples and other good things to eat. Most of these people we knew were our bitter enemies and some of the boys were afraid their bread was poisoned. We found some places where we were invited into the house and where the young ladies would smile and would talk to us about our homes. We knew these smiling young ladies might have been traitors and might have spies hidden away to hear what was being said. The dwellings or cabins of the slaves were mostly empty. Here and there we saw a few old negroes who chose to stay by Ol missus and masser to leaving their old Kentucky home to go out into a strange world. These old slaves were awful shy and always made some excuse to get away when we tried to talk to them. I suppose they were afraid Masser would see them. I often wonder where the poor blacks will go to find a home and something to eat. Those I have talked with say they are treated better now since they can run away without being chased by dogs.

We found a pretty country home the other day where the young lady took us out in her flower garden and gave each of us a bunch of flowers. I am sure her mother did not like to see us there. She had a cross look on her face and watched us thru the window as if she feared we might capture the girl and run away with her. When we went away one of the Durand boys told the girl he hoped to come back after the war and making the prettiest bow she said she hoped he would. When we went back to camp we told Chet Ide and Joel Harmon of Mondovi what a picnic we had and we all joined in and sang "Our Old Kentucky Home." I found out a strange thing lately, the darkies don't know anything about the song, of Old Kentucky Home, except as they have picked it up from hearing the whites sing it. I guess I must have thought it came out of some negroes heart. Anyway when ever I met a negro alone anywhere I always wanted to ask him to sing that song. Those I did ask would smile and grin and say "Massa I don't know it." Their ignorance of the song gave me a curious feeling.

This is a long letter. I hope it will find you all well as I am and happy. Love to the boys father and sister Do.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

May 29, 1863

May 29, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, May 29, 1863
My dear mother:

Your last letter came in due time, just two and a half days from the hour it was written. It must have been dated wrong. I got a letter from father the same day. It had been held up somewhere. I suppose the mail clerks get things mixed sometimes.
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We are under orders to march on short notice. We don't know if it means to go south, north, east or west. It means just one thing and nothing else "be ready." A soldier can't find any fault and if he does he is put in the guard house or if on a march he is tied up by the thumbs.

We have cooked up five day's rations and are ready at the first note of command to fall in. I am in a mighty hurry and must make this letter brief. Just another word. One of my mates wants me to say a good word for him to sister D. He is a nice clean fellow and all right. His only fault is quite common he don't think the black race is just human I can't beat him in argument but I know in my heart he is wrong about these poor wretched black people. You need not get excited, marching orders may not mean anything.

We may not strike tents for a month yet.

May 30th
Was out last night where the evening gun, a black cannon booms the hour of sunset. A man pulls a string called a lanyard and a roar that shakes the great bluff follows, and all this means sunset. I learned last night what it meant in French. I was standing near the big black cannon which stands almost straight above the river some 300 feet. A negro sweep doing police work, a fine looking mulatto was idly leaning upon his shovel and staring at a passing boat. What are you thinking about I asked? Taking off his dirty cap and bowing, he answered with a smile, "I kind hates to tell you, but I was thinking of my Jewlarke." I didn't know what a Jewlarke was so I asked him. "Why Massa he answered just a sweetheart," and hen he told me his story how he was a slave in Louisina, how he came out as cook for his master who was a Lieutenant in a Louisina Regiment, how his master's cavalry company was surprised by Union cavalry was fired upon by our boys, how he fell down to make believe he was dead and when our boys came up, he jumped to his feet and came back to Columbus with our boys. He had been at work in the fort at Columbus ever since. Whenever he spoke he took off his cap. I asked him what he done that for he said slaves had to do that in the south. I asked him if he was glad he was free and he said, "O yes Massa, I would be glad if I had my Kizzie wid me." (Kizzie was his sweetheart). The poor fellow took off his hat as he said this and slowly replaced it again. I am sure I saw tears in the fellow's eyes. The song of Nellie Gray came to my mind. It disappoints me that the negroes have never heard these songs. They stare at you when you sing them. While we were talking the gunner came and fixing the lanyard pulled the cord with a jerk and with a mighty roar that sent a tremor thru the bluff and a black smoke that hid the river for a moment told us that the sun had set and the flagman at head quarters slowly lowered the stars and stripes. Soliquasha, said my colored friend. What do you mean by that I asked. That is French he replied meaning sunset. Here was a slave teaching me French. Mother do you know I asked myself this question, what right have I simply because I am white to be the master race, while this man knowing more than I should be a slave because he is black. He called himself a Creole; that is a negro born in Louisina. He said he was born in a Parish 50 miles from New Orleans. His master raised sugar and rice and they toted it on two wheel carts to New Orleans where they sold it. His Massa's plantation was long side a live oak swamp that was full of deer, bear and aligators. He said the "Gaitors" warnt so bad as folks let on. "De niggers had a swimming hole in de bayou whar an old Gator had raised a nest of young uns ever
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year. In the winter the gaitors buried themselves like frogs in the mud. When they came out in the spring you could hear them bellow all night long." I don't know and I don't care whether this fellow was stuffing me or not. I was interested. Things he said about New Orleans and things he told me about his master's plantation away back in the swamps made me think of the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It looks as tho this war was to change all this. The South has had a mighty soft snap with darkies to do their work for a hundred years, while their masters have grown rich and insolent to us of the north. The papers don't say much about it but the truth is these slaveholders, these three hundred and fifty thousand chivalrous southern gentlemen, who own some four million of poor ignorant fellows who pushed to the front and mowed down by Union bullet don't know what they are fighting for. Love to father, brother and sister D.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

May 3, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, May 3, 1863

Dear sister: I am pleased that you have a good school and a good boarding place. That strapping boy so dull in his lessons may come handy in a fight with the others some time. Try and get home to see the folks often. Mother is worried for fear our regiment will be sent to Vicksburg where Grant is collecting a big army to storm the city. There are no rumors of our going of late, tho troops are passing down the river daily bound for Vicksburg.

So Ezra C is writing home some dreadful tales of guns and drums and gory battles? Let me tell you a bit of a secret. I don't want to dispute anybody, but he has not fired a gun. His story of the groans of the wounded and dying and the din of battle, does his imagination more credit than his sense of truth. I know where their regiment is posted and if they have been in any fights, the war department don't know of it.

Our Colonel has granted 100 furloughs to the regt. which means 10 men to each company. Those that are sick and convalescent will get the preferance. I am glad I am not in either list of unfortunates. I am feeling fine. I believe I have recovered from every ill effect of the measles in Minnesota. Poor Orlando Adams of Mondovi is still down and may never get better. Orlando has applied for a discharge, but they are hard to get. I wish he might go home for he is a very sick boy, and some say there is no hope for him. John Le Gore and one or two Mondovi
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boys are going to get furloughs.

Some new war songs have struck camp lately. One of them is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." The band boys tent, Chet Ide's headquarters, gets the new songs first. If there is anything funny about them, we can hear Chet laugh his peculiar hearty laugh. Another darkey sang, "Babylon is Fallen," has been going the rounds. It begins, "Don't you see de black cloud risen ober yonder, whar de ole plantation am?" I was in a saloon down town yesterday with a lot of the boys, some darkies were singing it. I could have heard it all day. The boys would chip in a penny each and the black fellows sang it over and over. Then they got the negroes to butting. Alec Harvey gave five cents, I gave five, and a lot of others. The darkies would back off like rams and come together head to head. They said it did not hurt, but I believe it did. The boys kept setting them on by giving them 5 cent scrip. The darkies were kept about half drunk to give them grit.

I was on picket duty the day I got your letter, about two miles in the country. I went to a house near my beat and found a lot of Union girls, anyway they said they were for the union. One of them asked me my age. When I told her she said that was just about her age. They gave me a lunch of corn bread and a piece of pork. When I came away I got some milk in my coffee can and a piece of Johnnie cake for 10 cents. I saw three blacks, two men and a women working around. I don't know whether they were slaves or hired help. I am going to get a pass one of these days and go back and buy some of the old ladie's butter. Of course I aint thinking about the girls. I have lately found out there are a lot of fellows getting passes to go into the country for milk and butter that are lying like troopers. It aint milk they want nor butter. They are looking for pretty girls or rich widows. Such things are common talk in the tents after the candles are lit until bedtime. Some of them have got so far in their fancies that they say they are coming back to Columbus after the war is over.

By the way, have you got that box of clothing yet? You say nothing about it. I often think of you and father singing together the plantation songs of the slaves. But do you know I would give O, so much if you could have heard what I heard last night. A steamboat from St. Louis lay here at wharf last night waiting for orders. After unloading its freight, the deck hands, all darkies, joined in singing a lot of plantation songs. I sat on some cotton bales watching them and listening to their curious speech. They gathered on the forecastle of the boat and for more than an hour sang the most pitiful songs of slave life I ever heard. The negroes may not know much, but they sing the most sorrowful songs in the sweetest voices I ever heard. It is wrong for me to have wished you here to hear them, because you would have shed tears. Just before I left one of them came up the gang plank near me. I asked him how long he had been free. He said he quit his old Massar in Tennessee last December and shipped on de steamer, Natchese at Memphis. I asked him where he learned the songs he had been singing. He answered "I dont know massa, cept da jes growed up wid me. Seems like I always knowed um. Maybe I learned um from my old Mammy who used to sing um wid me for she was sold down in Alabama." As the poor black wretch shuffled along past me (he had no clothes above his waist) I noticed scars across his back as if made by a whip.

I paid 10 cents for a New York paper yesterday. It had a speech in it by Wendell Phillips on the horrors of slavery. I am just beginning
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to see what made father walk the floor and say hard things about the slave holders after reading a speech by Wendell Phillips.

You will get this letter when you go home.

Death to copperheads.

Your brother,

CHAUNCEY.

May 30, 1863

May 30, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, May 30, 1863
Dear folks at home:

The final order came to-night after we had gone to bed, to be ready to go to Vicksburg by boat in the morning. There was a lot of skurry around all the long night. Clothes at the washerwoman's had to be looked after. Letters had to be written as I am writing this by the dull light of a tallow candle, some to wives some to mothers, fathers and many to sweethearts. I hope there were no unhappy girls because of this sudden leaving near about Columbus. But I fear there was a few. I am quite sure of two or three. Well, I am content if we must leave Columbus even if it has been a sort of "Old Kentucky Home" to us for nearly two months. It is one o'clock in the morning and the lights are yet burning in the tents. In a lot of the tents they are singing the "Old Kentucky Home." I guess the boys don't think much of its meaning but sing it because we are in Old Kentucky. A lot of colored women are running about the tents collecting washing bills. They all seem to know that we are to leave in the morning. There will be a lot of unpaid washing bills, but the darkies won't mind it much as they are used to working for nothing.

Max Brill my bunk mate has finally shut his mouth, so has Delos Allen and John LeGore my other tent mates, leaving me to blow out the light and go to sleep. Will finish letter and mail it in the morning.

May 31st. When we woke up this morning we found a great big New Orleans side wheel packet laying at the wharf waiting to take us on board. The roll call found many of us still asleep after such a night. Many of the boys fell in for roll call in nothing but shirts and drawers. I got on all but my pants and shoes. About half the company was in the same plight. The orderly was so good natured we gave him a good long cheer and ran back to our tents to finish dressing. The town was crowded with country people mostly colored folks to see us leave. The grand march to the boat began at ten o'clock and it was near three P. M. when we were all packed away on the three decks. Our company was on the hurricane deck. When the black deck hands loosened the four inch cable that tied our ship to the shore, the Regimental band began to play Dixie. The big boat floated out into the current, the big propelling wheels turned round and round in the muddy waters and looking back at the big high bluff which had been our home so long we did not know whether to be glad or sorry that we were leaving it.

There were hundreds to wave us goodbye, yes thousands. There were
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loud cheers and good wishes from the regiments we left behind. The blacks were afraid to come out in the open to show their good feeling but down by the river bank and from behind houses and fences where they could not be seen by the whites, they threw up their caps and hats and danced like crazy. The women caught their skirts with both hands and bowed and courtesied and some dropped upon their knees and held their hands above their head as if they were praying. The boys didn't seem to notice it much because they were niggers, but it made me think of some things in Uncle Tom's Cabin. I take one last look at Columbus and the fort on the bluff with the big black cannon peering out over the river. We make a bend in the river and Columbus is hidden from view.

A lot of boys are gathered on the forecastle singing "My Old Kentucky Home." I suspicion the fellows have a homesick streak on, they sing with so much feeling. Hickman is in sight but four miles away. I must close this line in order to mail it there. Those lines of Charles McKay I have heard father quote so often come to mind, "Groaning, steaming, panting, down the Mississippi."

Your Son,

CHAUNCEY.