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.