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.