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.