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.