June, 1863

June, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, June, 1863
Dear father:

Since my last letter we have moved our position to within eight miles of Vicksburg. Yesterday eleven

regiments of Burnside's corps landed. The old fellow himself with his well known side whiskers came also. His men think he is pretty near a god. The hills and valleys for miles and miles are literally white with tents, and the music of bands from morning till night is ringing in our ears. I think it would be safe to say there are not less than twenty-five thousand tents within a circumference of eight miles. Clouds of dust from moving troops fill the air in every direction. Several batteries of artillery are just passing, six to eight big horses to each gun, and the men riding on the cassions are breathing a constant smudge. They don't have to walk, that is one thing in their favor, but I don't think I would like the battery service. Rumor is still in the air that the Rebel General Johnson is maneuvering to cut his way through to help General Pemberton in Vicksburg. That is the reason for so many batteries and infantry coming here and taking positions at this time.

I am sure a hundred thousand rebels could not break our lines at this point. We have three lines of heavy fortifications with batteries every eighty rods. Several thousand spades are kept constantly busy strengthening the lines. Our regiment was out yesterday on spade duty. I suppose we did a lot of digging, but for my part I don't tthink I did more than an hour's work, and I am sure I worked as hard as anybody. It takes the darkies to dig. One hundred negroes will shovel as much dirt as a thousand yankee soldiers, and sing plantation songs all the time. I went out a mile yesterday on the second line to see them work and hear them sing. Most of their songs are love songs, and it's always something about the cotton and the cane fields.

Rules are mighty strict and getting stricter every day. Our main work is to clean and polish up our guns, and to see that our cartridge and cap boxes are kept dry. We have inspection of arms every day at ten o'clock. Every gun is examined and woe to the soldier whose gun is not in order. We know not at what hour day or night the roll of the drum will call us into line of battle. I noticed in a copy of the Alma Journal you sent me that the people of Gilmanton, had been subscribing funds for the U. S. Sanitary commission. The object is a noble one and I am glad the Gilmanton folks have gone into their pockets to help it. By the way does Mr. G. say anything more about the hundred dollars he was to donate toward a private school in our valley when I enlisted? Don't say anything about it. If he gives it, all right. If he don't, all right. I don't care for his hundred dollars.

But of course as he volunteered to give it I never can think as much of him for lying about it. This sanitary commission is a soldier's home or stopping place, wherever a soldier happens to be, in any town in the north. He is given a bed and meals free of charge and medicine and care if he is sick. They are in the border states as well too, where our troops are in possession. If they are out of money they can stay weeks or months without cost until they get money or transportation to go on.

Of course the good people of Gilmanton, expect to celebrate the 4th of July and I expected to be with them when I enlisted but I shall not be there. I am glad to hear you say that my spelling is better than it was, although you don't find my writing any better. You say I don't write any plainer than Horace Greely. Well, there were some that managed to read Greely and what the world found in his writings makes me rather glad that my penmanship is no better than his.

I am glad that sister D. secured a school. She don't write me so often any more. What's the matter with her? If the folks at home could know what happy fools it made of us to get letters, they would write more of them and longer ones. I

have half a mind to confess that I have had the blues for a couple of days. I have had a touch of intermittant fever. Hundreds of the boys are under the care of the doctor for chills and fever. We are drinking water a little better than poison, and the niasma of this Yazoo River is getting in its work. The cannonading about Vicksburg is fiercer than ever. Last night the doctor gave me some infernal stuff for my fever that kept me awake. It must have been midnight before I got to sleep. I lay with the flap of my tent thrown back watching the shells from a hundred mortars, making a fiery half-circle as rising like a flaming rocket they circled and fell into the city, then followed the explosion. How can those people sleep? I should think the people of that city would be perishing for sleep. There has not been an hour the three weeks past but shells have been bursting in every part of the city. There was a bunch of about fifty rebs passed our camp yesterday taken at Vicksburg in a charge upon our works. They were put upon a boat at this landing for transportation to the north. They tell awful tales of hunger and want of sleep in Vicksburg. It takes half the people all the time to put out the fires started by our shells and they have no flour and only horse and mule meat.

They hinted that Jeff Davis was inside the lines. The story isn't be lieved, but everybody is talking about it. It pleases me that Elder Morse likes my letters. I told Henry what his father said about his writing and he merely laughed. Henry Morse is sick at this time with chills and fever. It is a common sickness on this Yazoo River.

There is talk that the city will be stormed from the entire ten miles of line this week. A victory here and the surrender of Pemberton would open the Mississippi to the gulf, then hurrah for Virginia and a healthier climate.

Send me some stamps as money won't buy stamps down here. Tell her an aunt Dinah or a Topsy black as to show her how to bake hoe mother when I come back I'll bring cake in the fire place and roast potatoes in hot ashes.

Love to all, Your son,

CHAUNCEY.