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.