December 16, 1862

December 16, 1862

CAMP RANDALL MADISON, WIS.

Dear parents:
After just one week of varying incident from the time of leaving my old dear home I am seated to write to you. We did not find our regiment at Winona as we expected, they had gone to La Crosse. There were 27 of us in the crowd so we hired three liveries and drove all night and reached La Crosse at 6 o'clock in the morning we nearly swamped in the Black river crossing McGilvery's ferry the ice was running so, but we got over all right. We stayed in La Crosse one night and came on to Madison the next night. The people of La Crosse were good to us, they gave us a fine dinner in the biggest hall in town but mother it did not taste half as good as the last one you gave me of bear meat and vension and hot biscuit and honey. It may be I did not do right when I sneaked out of the house and got Billy and rode away without saying good bye, but I couldn't help it. I knew it hurt you to say good bye and that's why I did it.

Well, we are in Madison, the Capital of the state. How long we are to stay nobody knows. They say we need drilling and must get more disciplined before we go to the front. Well I hope we won't stay here long. These barracks are awful cold, and my bunk is on the top tier, next to the shingles too hot in the evening cold in the morning. I am wearing father's moccasins yet. I didn't get time to buy me boots in La Crosse or Winona.

Tell father to use my money and buy him some more. We are to be paid soon and I will send you some money. You need not lay it up as you did before but use it, and don't think of me, I am all right. I never want to see father wear patches again. I don't believe this war is for long. I expect to be home next year to help with the work. Maybe not, but we'll see.

I forgot to tell you that we came in the cars to Madison from La Crosse. It was a new experience to me, I was wide awake the whole way I was afraid we were off the track every time we crossed a switch or came to a river. At the towns, girls swarmed on the platforms to ask the boys for their pictures and to kiss the best looking ones. A young Frenchman, we called him the pony of the regiment because he was so small and quick got the most kisses. He was so short the boys held him by the legs so he could reach down out the windows to kiss the girls. Many times some old fellow held the girls up so she could be reached. It was fun anyway.

I never think but I am all right except when I try to double quick for a half hour or so. My wind gives out. Lieutenant Parr says, "Your measles stay with you yet." "Warm weather" he says, "will fix you all right." Love to all.

Your son.

CHAUNCEY.

December 25, 1862

December 25, 1862

Dear mother:
You see my paper don't have the regulation picture on it of Soldiers in file or in battle array I am tired of such flummery. The meaning of the whole thing is to make money for the inventor and not for the soldier. We are told that the life of the Nation is at stake, and every fellow that enlists offers himself as a martyr to save his country. I was thinking these things over last, about 2 P. M. in the morning when I was nearly froze and the relief guard came round and I was off duty to go to my tent and get some sleep. It seems like foolery to the common soldier that for two hours we must stand in a temperature of 30 or 40 degrees when we are a thousand miles from the enemy. I had to walk and walk to keep from freezing. The mercury was down near 40 below zero and the guard house where we sat down between reliefs or lay down was little better than out doors. The health of our Regiment is none too good. One man dies on an average every day. As I write this letter the drum is beating. The food we get is too blame for our bad health. The boys threaten a riot every day for the bad beef and spoilt bread issued to us and all this in our home state of Wisconsin. I went to meeting yesterday both morning and evening. In the morning at the Baptists in the evening at the Episcopal church. The preacher discussed the state of the Union. I thot he talked a bit like a traitor. He was sorry the states should go to war over the question of slavery. He hoped the Union would be preserved and he thot Uncle Tom's Cabin was much to blame for the war. Capt. Dwarwin said the preacher ought to live in South Carolina. There is talk that we will get pay to morrow. I have sent a record of our company home. Hope you got it I shall send you a lot of clothing just before we leave. Remember me to Uncle Edward Cartwright. It was kind of him to ask so often about me. I wonder where Ez and Ed are. They don't say a word. You remember they went in the 2nd Calvery.

I am glad father had such good luck getting deer this fall, you will have lots of venison this winter. It is too bad the Elk are all gone or killed off I know father is sorry. He blamed the Sioux Indians for scaring his game but the St. Louis hunters and the Farringtons of Mondovi have spoiled his hunting more than the Indians. I hope he will stop hunting bears alone. Its a dangerous business. Old Prince is a dear good dog but a bear is too much for him at close quarters. Is his jaw all right again? Every letter I get from home I expect to hear of Jenny's death. She is bound to rub her red blanket off in the brush and the first hunter that sees her will shoot her for a wild deer. I wonder what Claffin's people tho't when she ran in their bedroom and laid down to get away from the dogs.

Poor thing eight miles from home with no friend near, raced by dogs, until her tongue hung out, and to save her life rushed into the open door of the Claffin home. Poor Jenny Deer. With four bullet marks on her legs and body and one thru her red blanket, and the damned dogs racing her for life. Poor thing. Poor thing. I can't help it, but these things make me homesick.

I'm ashamed of myself, Dear Mother, Good Bye.

From Your Son

CHAUNCEY.

February, 1862

February, 1862

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke
February, 1862
I am glad you are knocking the split rail endways. Now we will have a good fence and no mistake.

We must not put any hollow logs

in for a foundation like the one you told of in Ohio, where one end came on the outside and the other on the inside of the field. I never think of that story of the old sow trying to get into the field after the farmer had turned both ends on the outside, without a good laugh. It seems you have heard that small pox is prevalent here. Don't be scared. There was but three or four cases and they were in the 30th Regt. Deaths are frequent enough but from other causes. We are losing a man a day on an average. The boys are buried on a hill just above the camp, and the roll of the muffled drum and the blank discharge of a dozen muskets in the solemn reminder that another soldier has gone to his last bivouc. Father, I begin to hate war and I have seen nothing of it either. There is much contention among the boys so much that we hear from the Potamac, about treachery, of McClellon and a never ending dispute about the freedom of the slaves. Just now too we are having a fearful rumpus about the rations. The boys are on the point of revolting against the government, the contractors or the state for the sour bread and stinking meat rationed out to us. The sickness of our Regt. is laid to bad food. Stuff they call coffee is made of various seeds.

It seems an outrage to get such treatment in the Capitol of our State. Curse upon curse is heaped upon the contractors. We have appealed to the members of the Legislature but they can't help us. After we had drawn our rations of sour bread the other day some three hundred of the boys marched down and stormed the commissary with the sour loaves as ammunition. The next day we got better bread but it did not last long. We hear that it is made out of musty crackers and soap. I don't know I'm sure. I got a letter just this minute and dear, I am so glad. I can see you all gathered about the kitchen stove. Mother has just filled the tea kettle for morning, and father is filling the oven with kindling to wet for starting the fire in the morning and I can see myself cuddled up under the blankets just as mother used to leave me after saying good night under the open shakes with the snow drifting in upon me. I don't believe I am homesick, but if I could not recall in memory these pleasant days of my boyhood I am not quite sure but I should be. Tell mother I am just childish enough to recall that little trundle bed prayer and to repeat it in a whisper every night. I do it because it brings me closer to her but how I cannot tell.

We are going south pretty soon, we hear it rumored every day.

I got a letter yesterday from Fred Rosman. He recalled the times we hoed corn together in 1857. Fred and I layed great plans about killing chickens and sending them to Fountain City and selling to the steam boats.

What funny folks boys are anyway. We talked about a lot of things. Most of our schemes have come to naught. O the pity, that the world don't pan out as they expected. Dora

said in her last letter that you were not so well. Your letter makes no mention of illness. I hope you are all right.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

November 10, 1862

November 10, 1862

Dear mother:
I believe my last was written to Doe, any way I will write this time to you. I like letters from father and Sister Doe, too, awful well, but if you could hear what I hear every day about things and persons at home, you would hear the fathers talked about and you would hear that the sisters and brothers were nice people, but the mothers in the daily talk of the soldiers are the best persons in the world. Well now this may sound like I am homesick but I ain't. I was going to say, we are to have inspection of arms in a little while and I tho't I would put in the time until then writing. The snow fell to the depth 5 inches last night and the woods this forenoon was full of soldiers hunting deer. A bear was seen by one of the boys but nothing but some partridges and rabbits was killed. Until day before yesterday the lakes were full of ducks and geese. I never saw so many ducks. The boys have killed lots of them. I purchased a pair of moccasins, paid $3.50 for them, a big price but had to have them. I want to do some shooting pretty soon. The orderly has informed us that there will be no inspection of arms. I noticed in the Sentinel that Gilmanton was exempt from draft. That is all the Gilmanton folks wanted, so they said. Now we will see how much those moneyed ones will give now that they are in no danger of draft. I was out on drill day before yesterday, the first time in six weeks.

The cabins are nearly done and I shall be glad to get out of the hotel with the boys altho I like things here. The commissary building is full of beef, pork and flour and good things to eat. The company will be divided into squads with a cook for each squad. Obed Hilliard is the cook for our squad, Obe and I are in partnership in trapping. The lakes and the Sioux river that runs by our camp are full of mink and rats. I found a big black mink in a trap of one of the other boys last night just below camp. His hide was worth $8. I was half tempted to take him out. The boys are playing just these tricks every day on each other. I nearly forgot to tell you I had bowel trouble the other day and Sergent McKay gave me a dose of burnt whiskey. It was the first whiskey I ever drank. It helped my bowel trouble and I suppose from what the boys tell me it made me do some
[p. 13]
strange things. Men Bump and Chet Ide of Mondovi have been laughing at me and telling me that I was a shame to old toppers that I talked stuff and got out Bill Hill's drum and pounded it. Anyway I am alright now. I have no more news to write this time. Mr. Ball sends his respects to Mr. Cartwright, and Mr. McKay sends his regards to father.

I was just closing this letter when one of the boys came into my room and told me the Indians were burning Paynsville, where the other four companies of the left wing are posted. I went to the window and sure enough there was a big light on the sky in the direction of Paynesville. I have been waiting a half hour for later news. If it meant Indians I knew we would be notified by courier. As we have heard nothing it means just a prairie fire, so good night mother.

Your loving boy,

CHAUNCEY.

November 10, 1862

November 10, 1862

Dear mother:
I believe my last was written to Doe, any way I will write this time to you. I like letters from father and Sister Doe, too, awful well, but if you could hear what I hear every day about things and persons at home, you would hear the fathers talked about and you would hear that the sisters and brothers were nice people, but the mothers in the daily talk of the soldiers are the best persons in the world. Well now this may sound like I am homesick but I ain't. I was going to say, we are to have inspection of arms in a little while and I tho't I would put in the time until then writing. The snow fell to the depth 5 inches last night and the woods this forenoon was full of soldiers hunting deer. A bear was seen by one of the boys but nothing but some partridges and rabbits was killed. Until day before yesterday the lakes were full of ducks and geese. I never saw so many ducks. The boys have killed lots of them. I purchased a pair of moccasins, paid $3.50 for them, a big price but had to have them. I want to do some shooting pretty soon. The orderly has informed us that there will be no inspection of arms. I noticed in the Sentinel that Gilmanton was exempt from draft. That is all the Gilmanton folks wanted, so they said. Now we will see how much those moneyed ones will give now that they are in no danger of draft. I was out on drill day before yesterday, the first time in six weeks.

The cabins are nearly done and I shall be glad to get out of the hotel with the boys altho I like things here. The commissary building is full of beef, pork and flour and good things to eat. The company will be divided into squads with a cook for each squad. Obed Hilliard is the cook for our squad, Obe and I are in partnership in trapping. The lakes and the Sioux river that runs by our camp are full of mink and rats. I found a big black mink in a trap of one of the other boys last night just below camp. His hide was worth $8. I was half tempted to take him out. The boys are playing just these tricks every day on each other. I nearly forgot to tell you I had bowel trouble the other day and Sergent McKay gave me a dose of burnt whiskey. It was the first whiskey I ever drank. It helped my bowel trouble and I suppose from what the boys tell me it made me do some
[p. 13]
strange things. Men Bump and Chet Ide of Mondovi have been laughing at me and telling me that I was a shame to old toppers that I talked stuff and got out Bill Hill's drum and pounded it. Anyway I am alright now. I have no more news to write this time. Mr. Ball sends his respects to Mr. Cartwright, and Mr. McKay sends his regards to father.

I was just closing this letter when one of the boys came into my room and told me the Indians were burning Paynsville, where the other four companies of the left wing are posted. I went to the window and sure enough there was a big light on the sky in the direction of Paynesville. I have been waiting a half hour for later news. If it meant Indians I knew we would be notified by courier. As we have heard nothing it means just a prairie fire, so good night mother.

Your loving boy,

CHAUNCEY.

November 20, 1862

November 20, 1862

Dear Parents: --

I had no letters the past week but look for one this afternoon. Things go on rather quiet most of the time. Our log shanties are all finished and I am now with the boys. I'll tell you, I am keeping a diary and I will give you a copy of it for a week in this letter: -- Nov. 10 -- Took a shave to-day. One of the boys said my beard made me look like a goat. Had my first dinner at the shanty, Obe is a good cook. Supply train loaded with provisions went by for Sauk Center and Paynesville. Some men, trappers I guess, from the Red River country went toward St. Cloud, they stopped for dinner. Said all quiet in the up country. They wore leggins like Indians and their stories if true, made them out more savage. According to their talk all Indians are red devils.

Nov. 11
-- A nice Indian summer day, a smoky, hazy, dreamy day. Took my gun and went rat hunting. Shot five but got only four. Came back to camp hungry as a dog. Had a glorious supper of beef, bread, potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie.

A big supply train bound for Fort Abercrombia pulled in for the night. Gen. Pope has ordered all infantry south. We may get to see Dixie yet. Hurrah! Snow all gone and big prairie fires to the east to-night.

Nov. 12
-- No letter from home to-day, plague on it. Wrote one to Geo. Wooster. Beautiful weather. Men Bump just from St. Cloud reports another one of the boys dead from measles. I believe I am all right except my wind ain't quite so good on a long double quick. Nothing to do, went out and shot a rat. Some of the lakes are covered with rat houses thick as hay cocks and as big. Sold my hides for 10 cents a piece. Boys trying their guns at a mark, found a great deal of fault with them. I found some papers at the hotel called "The Dacota Friend," that I have been reading. They were left by a woman who had been stopping. This paper was a missionary paper for the Indians and had letters in it from Bishop Whipple. He is certainly a good man. I read some of his letters about the honesty of the Indians when the white man was honest with them. It made me think of good old One Eye and his band that came so many times to our place. I spoke of Bishop Whipple to the trappers and what he said of their honesty, but they said Whipple was an old woman in breeches.

Nov. 13
-- I dreamed last night of One Eye's band, of the boys that I
[p. 14]
played with, and when we got hungry how we went to Chief Charley's tepee and found his mother cleaning the entrails of a beaver which she intended for soup. The boy talked to her in Sioux and she unfolded some buckskins and a robe or two and gave us a big hunk of elk steak. We put it on the fire and she went back to her job of dressing the beaver guts. In my dreams I saw the beautiful buffalo robes we lay upon while our steak was roasting. I could even smell them just as they smelt four years ago.

In this miserable Indian war I often wonder what has become of Lightfoot (father gave him that name because he could beat me in a race) and of his brothers and of Owena. They promised to come back in the fall of 1860 whe they broke camp the spring before two miles below us but they never came. I haven't lived long, but long enough to think this is a strange world. When I think of the Indians and remember how good they were to me and my father and mother, and reading in this "Dacota Friend" paper how the traders have made them drunk in order to cheat them, and how the government bought 35 million acres of them and has been owing them for it against their promise for 30 years, and because they were starving and broke into a warehouse for food, and this brought on a war, I am for the Indians as much as the whites.

Nov. 14
-- Cold and freezing this morning. A cannon from Fort Abercrombia came by this morning. They fired it a few times just for fun. Obed Hilliard and I went hunt ing, shot five rats, one partridge and one rabbit. On return to camp found a supply train in corral near us and 300 cavalry as guard. The fife and drum were out to-night, in honor of our guests I suppose. The visitors have some big fires going to-night and the crowds around them are very happy. The cavalry men who have been on the frontier are full of Indian yarns. I don't like their talk. If half they tell about their own rascally tricks is true, there is plenty of reason for the Indians to fight and fight to the death.

Nov. 15
-- There was quite a wild time last night. Some beer was stolen from the saloon and farmers came in this morning claiming soldiers stole their chickens. The cavalry did it. Our boys denied it and I am sure they told the truth. The cavalry made quite a show as they dashed off after the wagon train. I went to church to-day, the first time in a long while. Cold and freezing to-night. I nearly froze my fingers on dress parade.

Nov. 16
-- Everything froze tight this morning. This has been a lone-some day. Molasses was rationed out, the first since we came. It run awful slow. Drilled this afternoon. Snow began falling while we were drilling. The Colonel arrived from Paynesville. I have been reading all the evening in Bishop Whipple's paper, "The Dacota Friend." I have made up my mind the Indians are not to blame for this war. It is the traders, the contractors, the trappers and the Indian agents. O, the injustice of the strong against the weak in this world.

Nov. 17-18
-- Went hunting deer, no luck at all. I shall let the deer go to grass hereafter and hunt for rabbits only. Late this afternoon had a tilt snowballing. The boys had a lively time dodging my balls. They didn't know I had kept a pile of stones at every fence corner for years for blackbirds, and that a blackbird's head at ten steps was an easy mark. The ice on the Sioux is fine. Bought a pair of skates and had little fun on them. There is a big farmer, a Swede, three miles up river with a nice family of boys and girls. If the ice is good, will go up there in the morning.

Nov. 19
-- Was on the river skating all the forenoon. Ice not quite safe on the rapids. Several of the boys on a drunk. Had quite a scrap but no one much hurt. Had a spelling school to-night. Word came late to-night that we were to go south in a week, hope it is true.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

November, 1862

November, 1862

-- Went out to visit my traps and found several of them frozen in. Found four rats in the traps set in the houses. Most of the traps in the run ways except in springy places were frozen in. Caught a mink near the bridge over the Sioux in a little spring.

This afternoon skated three miles up the river to the house of a Swede who is one of the first settlers in this county. He has a big family of boys and rosy-cheeked girls.

I ate a late dinner with them. He was a great talker and told me a lot about the wild times he saw when he first struck the country. He was a friend to the Indians. They always camped near his house when trapping up and down the Sioux River, in the fall and spring.

This man told me the war began by a dog biting an Indian. The Indian shot the dog and the whites shot the Indian and a band of the Siesstou Sioux hearing of this and nearly starved, for government rations that never came, broke into a government warehouse and from this the war started that has cost the nation, so the papers say, round 40 million of dollars. This man told me he never lost a cent by a sober Indian. He had a room in his house called the Indian room where he always put them in the winter when they called. They preferred to sleep in tepees in the fall and spring when they came to trap for furs and to gather wild rice. They were the Santee Sioux, the band that One Eye and Chief Charley belonged to. He showed me a buffalo trail on a steep hill side leading down to the river, which he said had been worn for a hundred years.

He said the Indians never killed a friend if they knew it. The whites were more revengeful, they shot at every Indian, good and bad. He told me a lot more I can't write down. When I left for camp to-night it was dark, I looked at a few of the traps I had set but found nothing.

I believe I am as much of an Indian as the boys say, as white man and I can't deny it. I am awfully tired to-night.

Nov. 22
-- I heard this morning that Little Crow, Chief of the Sioux had committed suicide. If it is true it is because he has lost faith in the great "white Chief at Washington and the broken promises of the government. There are some things in this war that make me feel that I am an infidel. Why does God crush all these poor Indians and give it all to the white because he has wealth. They owned this land from ocean to ocean by the best title on earth given by God himself and yet because we are stronger we drive him away from the homes of their fathers and the graves of his ancestors and claim that Christ is on our side.

I have been studying the "Dacota Friend," the woman left here in the hotel, and I believe there is something terribly wrong in this war. I know the Indians have been wronged and mistreated. But what can a fellow like me do? I could not eat any supper to-night and I dared not tell the boys what I was thinking about. I knew they would joke me and make fun of me. I feel that Obed Hilliard is nearer to me than any of the boys and yet he says the Indians ought to be shot. I seem to think different from any of them. I may not be right but I can't help it.
[p. 16]
I know I think as Bishop Whipple does that all the wrong in this war is on the side of the whites. I am sleepy and it is ten o'clock.

Nov. 23
-- The landlord of the hotel gave me to understand this morning that I could not use any more of his writing paper, as I had left the house for the camp. Of course it's all right but it bothers me because I can't write. where the boys are bothering. We had a drill this forenoon. The captain said we would get pay to-morrow and I am glad. I have two pages in my memoranda of debt and credit accounts to be settled.

Nov. 24
-- Marching orders to be in readiness to start for Fort Snelling, I guess it's a go this time. The notice came last night and all my traps are set miles away on the river and lakes. Obe said when the moon comes up to-night if you will gather in the traps I'll do the other work.

It was after midnight when I got back with all the traps and my light is the only one burning as I write this last word.

Nov. 25
-- It was a lonely trip I made last night up the river and over the lakes picking up traps. I thought of so many things on that trip and I was not quite satisfied that Obe asked me to get traps alone but I made the trip just the same. In the woods between the lakes where the moon shone in spots under the pine trees I thought I saw figures of Indians but I would brace up and walk right up to them and I always found them stumps or trees. I can't say I was really afraid, but I was miles away in an Indian county and sometimes my heart would pump a little hard.

Missing Division Label
Final orders to begin our return march to Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, came late last night.' We were up bright and early. Some of the boys said they were fixing all night to get ready. I was hard to wake, because I had gone to bed so late after my night's jaunt gathering in my traps. I had paid a dollar and a quarter a piece for the traps, and the merchant said I had had such bad luck, he would take them back at cost and charge me $2.00 for the use of them. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart as I had expected a much harder deal. Some of the fellows, one or two from Mondovi had spent a good part of the night at one of the saloons just across the Sioux river and they were singing "Dixie" and "Johnny comes marching home" long before the morning drum beat. I was scared for a moment thinking that the march had commenced when I heard them singing, but hearing my chum snoring at my side, I went to sleep again.

All the forenoon its been Dixie, Dixie. A lot of the nearby settlers came in to see the boys go away. Some of them said its all right for us to go south, they wern't afraid any more the Indians had been scared away, others wished we would stay. I think there were four or five pretty girls from the Sioux river that felt sorry for reasons of their own to see the boys go away. It was near noon when we started out in hit or miss order for St. Cloud. We straggled into St. Cloud late in the evening. Every fellow looked out for his own sleeping quarters. It was cold. The Captain said, "Get the best quarters you can. I slept under the flap of a tent between barrels rolled up in two blankets with a freezing west wind like so much cold water pouring over my face all night. I was awakened in the morning by that song so dear to the south, Dixie. I would think more of what the song means, if the fellows had their heads.
[p. 17]

We have been late this morning Nov. 26th, in starting. I have put in the time writing my notes.

Nov. 26
-- I am tired tonight marched all day with heavy overcoat, haversack, gun and two big blankets. I made but 18 miles and when it began to get dark I dropped out of the squad I was with and went to a private house where I saw a light shining among the trees. A young woman and child were the only persons there. She told me her husband had gone to the war and she was carrying on the farm alone with a little help her brother gave her who came once in a while. She told me she had but one bed in the house but I was welcome if I could sleep on the lounge in the kitchen. I asked to sleep on the floor, but she said, "No." I told her where I slept the night before and she just looked at me with out saying a word. She asked me why my mother let me go into the army when I was so young. When I told her I tried to get my mother's consent a year before, she said, "O, you must be a crazy fellow."

Nov. 27th
-- I was up and on the road this morning by daylight. I was anzious to catch up with the boys I knew were ahead of me. To tell the whole truth, I shed a few tears because I could not keep up with the crowd. Obed had told me and Sergeant McKay that I was not over the effects of the measles and that I should take it easy. Father wrote me too, before leaving the hotel at Richmond, "Be patient and not try to do too much, you will need to save your strength for months." Just the same I am mad that the boys are going to beat me to St. Paul.

Nov. 28th
-- Fort Snelling, Minn. Arrived this noon. A few of the company still here, most of them come and gone. The right wing of our Reg't came down the Minnesota some days ago bringing with them 1700 captured Sioux, wives, children and old men and women of the hospitiles. They are camped on the bottoms just below the Fort at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. They are a broken hearted ragged, dejected looking lot. They have a million dogs almost, and you can hear them barking for miles. There are 156 Teepes. A Minnesota Reg't is in charge of them and no soldier is allowed inside the Teepes. Papooses are running about in the snow barefoot and the old Indians wear thin buckskin moccasions and no stockings. Their ponies are poor and their dogs are starved. They are going to be shipped West into the Black Hills country. Like the children of Israel in the Bible story they are forced to go forever from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their fathers to dwell in te mountains and on the barren plains of a strange land. I lifted up the flaps of a number of their Teepes and looked in. Every time I looked in I met the gaze of angry eyes. Nearly all of them were alike. Mothers with babies at their breasts, grand-mothers and grand-sires sat about smouldering fires in the center of the Teepe, smoking their long stemmed pipes, and muttering their plaints in the soft guttural tones of the Sioux. The white man's face was their hate and their horror and they showed it by hate in their eyes and their black lowering brows. Why shouldn't they? What had they done? What was their crime? The white man had driven them from one reservation to another. They were weary and broken hearted and desperate at the broken promises of the government. And when they took up arms in desperation for their homes and the graves of their sires they are called savages and red devils. When we white people do the same things we are written down in history as heroes and patriots. Why this difference? I can't see into it.
[p. 18]
I often think of what father said of justice in the world. That is, that it is the winning party the lions of the earth, that write its history. He said, "Cataline, had any body but his bitter enemies written his history might have been shown to be a good man." I have been fooling around the Indian camps all day and my company are all gone home. From where I sit writing these notes in a little niche on the side of the Fort overlooking the camp below I can see the sentinels pacing their rounds and hear the yelping of hungry Indian dogs. My fingers are numb. The cold west wind hits me here and I must quit. I must look for a warm place to sleep tonight and start for home in the morning by the way of Hudson and Eau Claire.

October 2, 1862

October 2, 1862

Dear parents:

In my last I wrote you of our arrival at Fort Snelling and that we were to march into the Indian Country in a day or two. Fort Snelling is a fine place and I hadn't got tired of it when orders came to divide our Regiment, the right wing to go up the Minnesota river and the left wing up the Mississippi. Our Co. is in the left wing so we came up the Mississippi river. The first night after quitting Ft. Snelling we camped in the edge of Minneapolis, a pretty town at the Falls of St. Anthony. St. Anthony, just across the river, has some nice big buildings and is the biggest place. It was awfully hot the day we left the fort and our extra blankets and belts full of amunition made a load. But we felt good and after supper I scuffled with Casper Meuli and Max Brill till bed time. I know father advised me not to do any wrestling, but a fellow can't say no all the time. A lot of us rolled up in our blankets under the trees on the bank of a creek with no tents that night. A lot of women or girls from town came into camp and walked over us as if we were logs. I thot they were pretty fresh. Some of the older
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soldiers talked pretty plain to them but they didn't seem to care. After while they were ordered away and then we went to sleep. The next night and the night after I slept in barns on the hay. The people seemed to be Germans but they were good and gave us all they had of milk and bread. The boys would gather like pigs round a milk pan, three or four drinking at the same time. We came into St. Cloud last night. We crossed the Mississippi here. It isn't the mighty stream here that it is at Alma, I could throw a stone across and hit a dog up here. These people gave us a warm welcome. Some of our boys came down with the measles and will go into hospital quarters until they get well. I have a queer sort of feeling, perhaps its measles with me. You know I never was sick. When the surgeon examined me in La Crosse he hit me a slap and told me I had a constitution like a horse I told him my living for some years had been buck meat, beaver's tails and bear flesh. He said, you are a tough one, that is plain to see. I am sitting on a big rock on the bank of the Mississippi. It seems strange that this clear beautiful stream is the same yellow broad river that runs so near my home. As I write I am using a fine tooth comb and I am finding bugs. I don't know where I got them, but I've got them. I was ashamed to be seen combing in camp so I came down behind the big rocks by the river. The other boys must have them. No Indians yet. The old settlers tell us tht buffalos were here but a few years ago. I have seen some of their horns, sharp, black wicked things. Their trails can be seen on the praries and along the river banks. I remember father saying the buffaloes and Indians would disappear about the same time. Pot hunters would slay the buffaloes for their skins, and the white man's whiskey was as surely slaying the Indian. Tomorrow we take up our march to Richmond, twenty miles away. I will write you then.

Your son

CHAUNCEY.

P. S. Tell father not to brag so much on Webster as a speller. I know I am not in his class quite, but I have bought me a pocket dictionary and I am studying it every day. Our Chaplain came along last night and saw me with it. He stopped and looked at it; well, he said it is next thing to a testament anyhow.

Good bye.

October 20, 1862

October 20, 1862

Dear mother, father and all the rest.

I am writing you from a sick bed propped up on the back of a chair made soft with pillows. You must think it strange that you have got no letters these three weeks but if
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you knew how fearfully sick I have been you would understand. I have been a mighty sick boy with the measles all this time in a big room in the city building along with ten other of my comrades. Three others of my Co. are here. Andy Adams, one of my chums from Mondovi. is one of them and he has been very sick. I tell you mother it is a terrible thing to be sick among strangers anyway. I've tho't of home and you so many times. Maybe if I had ever been sick before it would not have seemed so bad, but I want to tell you my dear mother, I never want to be sick away from you. The women of the town came in every day to give nice things to eat and make lemonade for us but they were all strange and new ones came nearly every day. They were kind, of course but O, I don't know. I felt if they were thinking more of their nice clothes and how fine they looked than of us. They wouldn't give me all the water I wanted, and I was always so thirsty. I just dreamed all the time. I don't want to talk like a baby mother, and the boys say, "Don't write any bad news to your father and mother," but you have always told me I should tell the truth and I believe its all right. God knows I never felt before what it meant to have a good home and a kind father and dear mother. And for these nearly three weeks on my back, I have thought of you all more than a hundred times. What a nice thing is a good home. Don't think I am home sick mother, you know I can say all these things and still not be homesick. When a fellow is sick and all broke up he can't help saying soft things. But I know if you had been here or I had been there I should not be where I am. Some of the fellows here are awful rough in their talk. They wasn't very sick and they are joking me and a young fellow in Co. E. because we are talking so much about our home and our mothers. I don't deny that I long to see my dear mother, and when the tears come into his eyes I know the poor boy that lays next to me is thinking of home too.

Don't think for a minute mother, that I am dying. I am getting better and in a few days will rejoin my Co., which is now at Richmond, about 20 miles from here. It will seem like going home almost, to get back to my dear old Company. The nights are getting freezing cold and they tell me the lakes are covered with ice, and lately I dreamed of laying on my stomach and drinking cold icewater through the air holes. I suppose it's because I am always so dry.

They say that a few days ago three hundred soldiers came down from Ft. Abercrombie, 130 miles from here. They left everything quite, in fact the Indian war seems at an end unless the upper Sioux turn on us.

Colonel Sibley has recovered all the white prisoners and nearly 2.000 Indian prisoners. The question seems to be whether to let the Sioux remain or drive them from the homes of their ancestors into some western reservation. It seems likely
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that they will be driven away. Mother this whole Indian question is wrong. Laying on my sick bed here, I can't help thinking of the wrong doing of the government toward the Indians. I am losing heart in this war against the Indians. When you come to think that all this beautiful country along the Minnesota river was bought for 2 cents an acre and that the government still owes them this pitiful sum for it, I am sorry for them. The boys tell me I am no better than an Indian when I talk about it, but I can't help it. God made this country and gave it to the Indians. After a while along comes Columbus with his three cocle shell boats, takes possession of all the continent in the name of the Almighty, Queen Isabelle of Spain and the Indians are treated as wild beasts. I often think as I have heard father say, "if this is the spirit of the present Christianity, God will dam it.

I don't expect we will have a brush with the Indians unless we go farther west. The boys at Richmond are having good times, hunting deer and bear and catching fish. The lakes are clear and cool and full of fish.

We don't know where we are to winter, likely as not just where we are. My dear mother I am out of money. I haven't got the three dollars yet I wrote for the last time. I got to borrow a stamp to send this letter, but its alright. Mother, how does the new house come on? Have you got in it yet? Have you dug the potatoes yet? Does brother W. kill many prairie chickens this fall, or hasn't he got any ammunition? Has father got the stable plastered up warm? The bule clay in the bottom of the creek is all right for that.

Mother, don't you hate to leave the dear old cabin this winter for the new house? I love to think of that best of beds under those long oak shingles warped and twisted, that let in the rain and snow in my face. I would give all this world if I owned it, if I could sleep there tonight. Did the corn get ripe? Has father broke the colts? Has brother W. broke the steers so they can haul things? How is father Cartwright? Has father killed any game this fall, what is it? Mother, as to the money I sent home, I want you or father to use it for anything you want. All I want is the first payment on that land so that is clear I don't care for the rest. You must get some apple trees if you have not already, and get a stand of bees. You ought to raise your own honey. I would like very much to hear from you mother. I haven't heard from home since I left La Crosse, I do not complain. There may be letters some where for me. Remember mother, a letter in your own hand writing. Love to all, to yourself, father, brothers and sister.

Your soldier boy.

CHAUNCEY

October 28, 1862

October 28, 1862

Dear folks at home: Since my last you see I have made a change. I am now with the company at New

Richmond. Andy Adams of Mondovi and one of the Mann brothres and my self came up in one of the Well's Fargo stages. The captain ordered us to the hotel as he tho't we was not strong enough for camp yet. I got your last letter the day before we left St. Cloud and what you told me about exposing myself after having the measles scared me just a bit. I had been walking about for three days and when I crossed the streets the wind was cold and so strong it would nearly throw me down and I had nothing but my summer drawers Our women nurses didn't warn us a bit, but told me I should go out and get strength. I was glad enough to get out doors once more, I think I am getting all right. I was pretty sick the doctor told me, just as if I didn't know my own feelings. The Ladies Aid Society was real kind. One old lady who did not belong to the society would come nearly every day with some sour candy and give it to all of us because our mouths tasted bad of the fever. She said she had a dear boy somewhere in the South and she hoped some one would be good to her boy if he got sick.

I tell you it seemed awful good to see the faces of my old chums. I had been away from them nearly four weeks and it seemed that many months.

They are busy building log houses to winter in. They are building 18 houses for store buildings and quarters. It is getting cold and the weather makes them hustle. The boys are still in tents tho it is freezing every night. The rest of the left wing have gone up to Paynsville to winter, four companies. I woke up this morning with a pain in my stomach. I told Elder Harwood of it and he told me not to eat any more biscuit before going to bed. We have a nice hotel and lots to eat and I am hungry all the time. They give us wild rice, bo't of the Indians, twice a day, and it is good. The Landlord said it was nearly gone and the Indians were gone and he didn't know when he could get any more. I like to hear him talk about the Indians. He said they had been cheated and lied to by the government contractors, and that bro't on all the trouble. He said he lived amongst them all his life and they were good people unless they were drunk.

I have lost fifteen and a half pounds in weight the three weeks past. I forgot to tell you I found a letter from you dated the 10th here in the Captain's hands. He forgot to send it to me. I am glad father has such good luck killing deer and bear this fall. Thank goodness old dog Prince was close by when the bear made that rush for father. He no doubt saved father's life. I hope the poor dog's jaw is not broken. The bear's jaw of course was too strong for him. Don't skim the milk for dear old Prince, give it to him with the cream on until he can eat meat. We have bear and deer close to this place but you will believe me, I would dearly like to be with father in his hunts, long enough at least to help him kill two or three fat bears.

Don't fear but I will be careful dear mother of my health, you scared

me when you explained about cousin Ben's death a month after he got up from the measles. I have had the measles, and "theys done gone" as Topsey said, in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Rumors of Indians coming back on the war path is the talk among the boys in the hotel tonight. The sky is all lighted up some ten miles away by prairie fires tonight. The boys say it means Indians. My room is about 8 by 10 feet and the light from the prairie fire makes a shadow on the wall. Some of the boys talk like they wanted dreadfully to get into a scrimmage with the Sioux. It must be I aint a good soldier, I dont think it is fear, but I am all the time thinking of One Eye and his son and wife that came to our house so many times to get flour and coffee, and the times I played with their boys and sat on their buffalo robes and ate elk steak and vension steak by their wigwam fires. You know we wondered that they never came back any more, and father said they were afraid of their lives because the Dacotas and Minnesota Sioux had declared war and to save their lives they had gone west.

I don't deny that I sometimes think of Owena, the Chiefs daughter that father plagued me about, and wonder where she is.

Bishop Whipple says the government has never kept its word of payment for the land and the rations promised the Indians. That man Whipple must be another William Penn. He has always been the Indian's friend in Minnesota. I read in the Sentinel yesterday that he had visited the White House in Washington and plead with President Lincoln with tears in his eyes that the government should pay these Sioux their promised annuity and that would stop the war. Why don't they do it? I am a white man's son and I like my own people but can never forget what Chief One Eye told me in his wigwam on the Three mile creek that the white chief at Washington was a liar because they never got their annuity and their beef was tough and unfit to eat.

I hope father will not sell my 40 even at a hundred dollars profit. I like Wisconsin best of all yet.

They are all in bed but me, so good night.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

September 15, 1862

September 15, 1862

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke,
September 15, 1862
A SOLDIER BOY'S LETTERS

Dear parents: I am sitting on the straw in my tent with my paper on a trunk for a desk, this is Monday, before breakfast that I am writing you. This has been a very busy week for the soldiers.

We did not get through mustering until last evening which as you know was Sunday. The mustering officer was here all day, and he was a flerce looking fellow. Any how thats the way he looked to us younger boys that couldn't swear we was 18. We had to muster in all the same, if it was Sunday. Some of the boys tho't it was a bad omen, and meant bad luck. We were not exactly mustered in because we did not get our pay, but the companies were drawn up in line, one at a time, and the officer with his hands behind his back, walked along ten feet or so in front of the line looking every man in the face. Every one he suspicioned of being under 18, he would ask his age. He turned out a lot of them that were not quite 18. Some of them that might have been old enough, were getting home sick and was glad to get out of it by fibbing a little. Seeing how it was working with the rest, I did not know what to do. I went to see our captain but he said he could not help me. He said his interceding would do no good. I saw our Chaplain and he told me to tell the truth, that I was a little past 16, and he tho't that when the mustering officer saw my whiskers he would not ask my age. That is what the boys all told me but I was afraid. I had about made up my mind to tell him I was going on 19 years, but thank heaven I did not have a chance to lie. He did not ask my age. I am all right and the boys were right. Say do you know the sweat was running down my legs into my boots, when that fellow came down the line, and I was looking hard at the ground fifteen paces in front.

I suppose I am a full fledged soldier now. I have got my uniform and that awful mustering officer has gone. While I am writing, the fife and drums are playing again; how I wish you could come down and see the soldiers. To see a thousand soldiers on regimental drill or parade is what visitors call a splendid sight. Hundreds of people in La Crosse come out to see us every evening. There was about five hundred visitors here last night to see us on dress parade. Gen. Pope got off here last Saturday evening and we expected to see him
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in camp but he did not come. I was in town the evening he came but my pass did not last long enough to see the General. But I saw some of his aids. Chester Ide's wife came from Mondovi yesterday. There is hundreds of other things I could speak of but I don't have paper or time to mention them. But there is one more thing I have to tell you, we are to start for Cincinnatti next Thursday, so if you can come down before that time you will find me here.

We are to get our money tomorrow and if we do I will get my picture taken. We got our guns yesterday. If you write at once, direct to La Crosse Wisconsin.

Your loving son,

CHAUNCEY.

P. S. The boys that were rejected lit out last night and took their uniforms with them.

September 20, 1862

September 20, 1862

Dear parents: One more week has gone and we are still in La Crosse. Our daily stunt is to drill four hours a day. Our drill master is a nice little fellow. He has been sent to us to drill us and will be made our 2nd lieutenant, He is a proud bugger in his brand new suit of blue with gold cord on his legs and shoulder straps and he walks so darn straight he leans backward. But he's a good one.

There is not a man but would be too glad if we had orders to march for Dixie tomorrow. Its awful tire-some staying here doing nothing It's harder work than farming. The Governor telegraphed to the Colonel of the regiment yesterday that we were liable to get orders to go up the river to Fort Snelling by boat and sent into the Sioux Indian country. There is a boy 14 years old here in camp, who came from above St. Paul, whose father was murdered by the Indians ten rods from him last week. The boy escaped by crawling under a bridge and waiting till a team came along. He came to St. Paul and worked his way down on a steamboat to this place.

I haven't been homesick a minute. I like drilling pretty well and our Bob, that is the name of our lieutenant, says we step up like regulars. Please excuse these short letters. Tell George Wooster to write and I will answer him. Also tell sister Do to add a line when you write.

Is she catching any fish these days? I hope trapping will be good this fall so father can make a little extra change. Are the pigeons in the stubble like they were last fall when I shot 19 at one crack? My goodness, how I would like a pigeon pot pie. Tell father he will find a lot of shot in the old leather knife case on that shelf in the entry way. They are some I bought last year when Fred Rosman and I were going to get rich shooting prairie chickens and selling them to the steam boats. I wish we could get our money so I could come home a few days. I suppose you got my picture. How do I look as a soldier? I tell you it looks military like to see the fellows in their regulation blue.

Write often as you can conveniently, anything from home seems good.

CHAUNCEY
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P. S. I have reopened this letter to say we have orders to report at once to St. Paul. I think we will start in the morning. Don't write till I can give you my address.

September 21, 1862

Dear Mother

I wrote you yesterday we had orders to report to St. Paul to fight the Sioux Indians, in Minnesota. Sure enough we are packing things and will leave here in the morning on the big sidewheel steamer St. Paul for up river. Some of the boys are mad and some are glad. Some say they did not enlist to fight Indians but to fight rebels, but military orders must be obeyed. If I thought the young Sioux chief who has been to our place so many times with his hunting party who was so good to us, letting us have elk meat and venison for a little of nothing, I should not like to think of shooting at them. I remember father said, if a few Indian contractors were scalped, there would be no trouble. I read last night in the paper a letter from Bishop Whipple of Minnesota, who said the government had not kept its promise with the Indians, that they had no blankets and no rations of beef, and that was the reason they went on the war path. The bow and arrows the chief's son gave me, I wish you would see that they are not lost. I don't believe Indian John stole Mr. Cripps's gun. He is a good Indian and if he is not killed in the war he will bring it back.

I will finish this in the morning.

Sept. 21st. I am sitting on the hurricane deck of the St. Paul Steamer where our Company has been assigned for the trip to Fort Snelling. We were an hour filing on board the boat this morning. Everybody is feeling good. Some of them are happier than they ought to be. Bill Anderson and some of the Mondovi boys are pretty well loaded. Chet Ide doesn't drink, but he is laughing louder at the fellows who do drink. Gile Bump of Mondovi, and I crawled under the ledge over the cabin to get in the shade. The boat has an awful load.

A thousand men with all the fixtures and equipment. There is not room to lie down! The band is kept pretty busy. Whenever we pass a boat or reach a town the band pounds and blows for all it's worth. The women and girls wave their handkerchiefs, and every fellow thinks it's meant for him. I'll bet there never was so jolly a crew on this boat before. When the boat stopped at Winona, some of the boys took a high dive from the top of the wheel house into the river. I never thought they would come up again but they did, and swam back to the yawl and climbed into that and were pulled up by ropes onto the boiler deck. We have just passed Fountain City and I must close this letter so as to mail it at Alma. The boat stops at every town, but no soldier is allowed to step off the boat. We have just passed a raft and the way the logs teeter in the waves is a wonder. The fellows shake their fists
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and yell dirty, hoodlum stuff, but the boys in blue give it back to them in plenty.

Tell Elder Morse's folks that Henry is well and spoiling for a fight.

CHAUNCEY.

April 10, 1863

April 10, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 10, 1863
Dear mother:

Your much valued letter received. I am just as glad as I can be that all are well but there is a tone of plaint as to things I can't
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understand. It must be you have the blues. Don't think of me as being in danger for a minute, for I am having a royal good time. Its this way with me. If I have the blues it is when I get a fit on of thinking of the past when I did'nt do as I should. I guess you would call it remorse. Some of the younger fellows and I have talked these things over and I find they were kind of troubled in the same way. They said it made them feel awful mean when they remembered some sly things or some deception they played on their mother and father. These things bring on homesickness and that sends them to the hospital, because they can't eat and so are put down on the sick list. I think as much of home as any of them but I don't want to see it until we thrash the rebs to a finish. We have four Wisconsin regiments at this place, the 25, 27, 31 and 34, a full brigade. You have doubtless heard, that the Gov. is enlisting negroes and forming negro regiments. They are officered by whites and there are a lot of candidates for positions in all the white regiments. Some 25 have applied for positions from our regiment. There is a lot of joking on the side about the fellows that want to officer the nigger regiments. Our regt. has just drawn a new outfit of rubber blankets, hats and short coats. Enclosed you will find some flowers given me by a poor black washer woman I met on the road up the bluff today with a bundle of clothes on her head. As she handed them to me she said "Please massa will you 'cept dese flowers from a poor nigger woman who jes loves de Lincoln soldiers." Maybe you has a sweet heart and will send um to her." I told her I had a sweet heart, my mother, and she said "You's a good boy honey." The black folks are awful good, poor miserable things that they are. The boys talk to them fearful and treat them most any way and yet they can't talk two minutes but tears come to their eyes and they throw their arms up and down and praise de Lord for de coming of de Lincoln soldiers.

In your last letter you spoke of my going to school, if I ever return.. I am not bothering about things so far in the future. I am troubled about this awful war. Maybe I ought to think more of Webster, as father keeps jibing me about my spelling. If he will give me time I will learn to spell too as I aint but 16 years old, that is I'll be 17 on the 15th of May if there has been no juggling with the family register.

By the way I nearly lost some valuables the other night. I was on Provost guard, the other night in town, at the depot. My relief had lain down at 11 o'clock for a four hours sleep. At 3 o'clock in the morning we were routed to go on guard, feeling in my pockets I found my gold pen missing. My money I had placed in my shirt pocket was safe. The comrade next me lost $17. In the morning my gold pen and holder was found in the mud near the platform. A detective force has been looking for the thieves but they don't find any thieves. Word has just come that Nathan Mann of our Co. has just died in the hospital. Poor fellow, he has two brothers left in our compaany.

A skirmish yesterday at Hickman, 26 guerillas were captured and bro't to this place for confinment as prisoners of war. There is nothing very stirring about us. The boys are getting tired of mere guard duty and are hoping for any chance that will send us to the front. For my part I aint dying to go to Vicksburg where their is a better chance of getting killed as some claim they are. Maybe they are more anxious to die for their country than I am but from what I know of them I am doubtful. There is nothing farther from my mind at this writing than a wish to
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die for anybody or anything. I am hopeing and praying for anything to make the rebels squeal and call it quits so I can come home and have a good time. Of course I am willing to take my chance, come what may, but I would a little rather live, come what may.

Tell Elder Morse, Henry is all right and eats, if any difference more than his rations every day.

Love to all.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

April 15, 1863

April 15, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 15, 1863
Dear Father: -- Yours of April 9th came in due time. I am so glad all are well and that you are so cheerful and hopeful that the war will soon end.

You must be very brave to undertake so much work as you have planned, this spring. I have just received a letter from cousin Ben Gardner, whose regiment is camped just back of Memphis, Tennessee. You know he is in the cavalry. He says he is orderly and having a good time. Plenty of rations, no bullets to face and regular pay. He says, "I hope to meet you my son and talk over family matters and get a good look at you." I'll bet he is a lively fellow and loves a good time. He writes about the war as if it was a picnic. I enclose his last letter. He has no fear of rebel bullets, you can see that.

We moved our camp yesterday over near the brow of the overhanging bluff. The view is much finer especially of the Mississippi. Say father do you know I never look at the river but I think of home. I go down to the shore nearly every day to wash my feet. When I dip my hand in the water I think that it comes from Wisconsin and I wonder what part of it came from Beef River. It is terribly black and muddy, made so by the water of the Missouri that flows into it above St. Louis. From our new camp we can see the daily mail boat, 12 or 15 miles away that brings us good and bad news from home and from Washington.

Last night I lay awake for hours listening to the honk honk of the wild geese passing over our camp toward the north. Does the dam which we repaired, the beaver dam east, still hold? If it does you must have plenty of shooting at ducks and geese this spring. Don't think me homesick father, when I tell you I turned over many times in my bunk last night thinking of the stories you told me of the early French traders who broke the great beaver dams to get the beavers and so destroyed the nesting places of the wild ducks and geese that made their homes in our valley and on the neighboring creeks before the coming of the whites. That novel called "The Prairie Flower" still sticks in my craw. I never read any book that so haunted me, sleeping or awake. I remember that you told me that it was poison to read such stuff, but I don't believe it has hurt me. The people in "The Prairie Flower" were not in fear of any law but they did right in the midst of the Sioux Indians and the lonesome hills and wild animals about them. I remember you said Prairie Flower was a fictitious character, an unreal character, and that women were not as good on the average as she was painted. Well father, I thought you might be wrong then but now I have come to think that you were right. Getting back to ducks and geese and the beavers, how I wish I might be with you this spring. What lots of fun you are having. All this passed through my mind last night as I lay in my tent with the lappel thrown back so I could see the north star and the dipper. Both of them are nearer the horizon than in Wisconsin. But they brought to me in their
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silence and sameness something of the nearness of home.

The deep dark forests on the Missouri side reaching back for miles are slowly turning to green. Spring is here and no mistake. The freshness of the grass and leaves, the golden sunshine and carol of birds in every tree, give no hint of this human war. One thing I most forgot. I expressed $20 with Capt. Darwin to Durand. You may have to go to his home for it. His family lives about three miles from Durand. I have an overcoat I wish was home. I will give it away to the first darkey that looks like Uncle Tom. I know there are some grey backs in it. I would rather put the grey backs on some darkey than on mother, for I know she dreads such things.

I send you today a couple of southern papers. One, The War Eagle, printed at this place, the other a Vicksburg sheet full of brag and bluster about fooling the Yankees. They are a fair specimen of southern newspapers. Are there any copperheads up there? It makes the boys mad to read of copperheads at home. They are more dangerous than rebels at the front because the south is made to believe they have lots of friends in the north. They had better lay low if we ever get home. They will find its no joke to the south.

How I should like to have a brotherly tussel with brother K. and I think of the boys so often. Well, we will have a good time when the war is over.

How does Henry Amidon prosper? Confound him he has forgotten old times I guess. I have written him but he don't answer. I asked him in my letter if he remembered the time his father caught us down by the swiming pool laying in the hot sand stark naked and covering ourselves with the sand. I never was more ashamed in my life than when his father hollared and yelled to see us and we rolled into the creek to hide. Henry didnt mind it as much as I did. O, but those were happy days and we didn't know it.

Father good bye till next week.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

April 25, 1863

April 25, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, April 25, 1863
Dear father:

Your latest leter rec'd. I am perfectly happy to know that all are well at home. Don't worry
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about my morals or my health, I am taking pretty good care of both. The life of the soldier is not a very good reform school, but a boy can keep clean in the army, bad as it is around him, if he has the stuff in him. Our Lieutenant Colonel was talking about the loose ways of some of the soldiers the other day. He said there would be one man if he lived that would go home as clean as when he entered the army, meaning himself of course.

Dan Hadley got a letter from Geo. W. Gilkey the other day. It was a nice friendly letter. He said he hoped we would hurry up and lick the rebels so we could come home as they needed our society in Buffalo Co. He said the girls were all waiting for a soldier boy. Mr. Gilkey seems to be a fine man. I see by the northern papers there is talk of conscripting. Are you in the conscript limit? I hope not. I would hate to see you in the army. I don't think the government will need any more soldiers. They are planning a big campaign on the Potomac to try and break Lee's army. Grant has driven Gen. Pendleton into Vicksburg and is closing in around that city. The move seems to be to lay seige and starve him out. We hear a lot of such talk on the streets but the fellows keep mighty straight in their conduct.

There are some rebel officers in prison here. I was on provost guard the other day and stood on a post near a barred window of the jail. I could see four or five young locking fellows in the room walking back and forth in their grey uniforms, trimmed in fancy gold braid and shoulder straps. They would call me up to the window and try to make snakes out of me. They said I was a black Republican and that I was fighting for the niggers and didn't know it. The oldest one talked like a gentleman, asked me a lot of questions about Wisconsin and said he had a boy in the southern army about my age.

Since the hot weather we are all getting our hair shaved off. Mine is cut close to my scalp. Boats are passing daily loaded with troops for Vicksbury. It begins to look warlike in that vicinity. There will be a big battle at Pemberton will come out side his breastworks and fight. We look any day for orders to go down there. We don't know the names of the troops that go by but we always give them a good big hurrah and they send it back with a roar.

We expect the 27th. Wisconsin here tomorrow. We will make them welcome as we have a lot of picket duty for the force at this place. Yes I wish you would send me the Sentinel while we stay here at least. Northern papers are peddled in camp at from ten to fifteen cents apiece.

Its nice that you have some fresh cows. Better not try to raise the calves you have so much else to do. We get pretty good milk from the nearby farmers but they don't know how to make butter. Its white and rank. The cows down here are a poor starved looking race. They have no grass for hay much to depend on, they have corn stalks for feed in winter. The Blue Grass region is away east of here. That is the home too of the Kentucky horses we have read about.

Well, the boys are putting on their belts getting ready for the call to drill so I must close for this time.

Love to all,

Your son,

CHAUNCEY. 

August 3, 1863

August 3, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 3, 1863Dear Parents:

The expected move came at last. After four days of steaming and tugging and puffing and groaning, we find ourselves camped near Helena, Arkansas, on the banks of the old Mississippi. For nearly four days the wheels of the brave old boat went round and round stemming the muddy water of the dear old river. We were glad to know that every hour brought us nearer to good drinking water and pure air.

All the 27th and 28th of July the ambulances were busy picking up and carrying the sick to the hospital boats. The bands on the boats kept up their playing so as to give the sick fellows courage. The evening of the 28th our regiment, reduced to 700 men, marched on to an old vessel that had been used as a blockade runner, and as you may suppose it was full of holes bored through and through. Well we had not been on board an hour before the rain and wind began to pour upon us from above and from all sides. It was a regular cloud burst. The fellows on the upper deck were soaked and so were all of us below decks. The water poured through every seam and hole.

We lay at the landing all night. We got under way down stream early in the morning and about ten o'clock our old shaky craft turned its nose up the muddy current of the

Father of Waters. Every fellow that could get a string lowered his coffee can for a drink of water. The boys would smack their lips and say the dirt in it tasted like Wisconsin dirt. Reaching Lake Providence that evening it was decided to transfer three companies to another boat, as our boat was overloaded and threatening to sink. Companies B., C. and F. went ashore to follow on the next boat. We pushed on with a more comfortable feeling. The next day I had a turn of fever as did a hundred others, on account of sleeping in wet clothes. I fixed that after a while with a dose of quinine and brandy, put up for me by the steward. Our vessel was old and rickety and made slow headway.

The faithful old craft panted, toiled and groaned its onward way toward the north star. We laid up alongside the shore two nights. And except to stop now and then for wood, there was no excitement. We stopped one night opposite a big peach orchard. Got peaches and chickens enough to make us nearly all sick and confiscated sixty mules. There are few towns along on either side and the forests come right down to the shore and look as wild and dark as they did when the French Jesuits visited the river two hundred years ago. Helena is not so far up as we had hoped to go. Soon as the remainder of our regiment gets here we expect to be sent to Memphis, Tenn., a hundred miles farther north.

We are camped under some big trees close to the shore, and we like it much better than on the miserable Yazoo. We can buy stuff here for less money than at Vicksburg. I should judge there were 15,000 troops at this place. They expect Gen. Price to attack this place any day. He is a foxy old war dog and may pop up any day. Let him come, he won't catch our commander Gen. Prentiss asleep. They say Prentiss always sleeps with one eye open.

While I am writing William Thomas of Mondovi, is sitting on a bench beside me. The poor fellow is dead home sick. He looks very bad. He watches the steam boats passing up the river and wishes he might get a pass to go home on one of them.

Mensus Bump came round awhile ago and treated us all to a cup of milk punch, that is milk and whisky. All the sick boys got some. It pretty near laid me out as it did a lot of others. It is a cold morning for this country and I dropped my paper and went over by the fire, and the heat made me dizzy. Dan Hadley and Obe Hilliard said it was better than quinine and they just as leave take some every day.

Well father, what do you think of the war anyway? It seems the rebs are trying to make an alliance with France, and make Napoleon Dictator, or something. Anyway to get the French to help. The South ain't licked yet, and we may be in for a lot of trouble yet. We get the daily papers from Memphis, and so keep posted. Have you got a letter advising you of the check I sent you of forty dollars? A load of Butternuts, rebel prisoners, is just passing on the steamer Hope, bound for the north. They will get into some prison, get full rations, get strong and be exchanged for our boys that have been starved and unfit for service.

Father, I often think of the three hundred thousand Catalines, as you called them, that brought on this war just because they could not run this government in the interest of slavery. It is only slave holders that fill the offices in the southern army. It is the poor white trash that even the darkies look down upon that fill the ranks and take the brunt of the fight. Poor devils, they don't know that they are fighting for a rich aristocracy that despises them.

I don't know about your taking that Pierce darkey to work for you. Some of them are the worst liars and thieves in the world. Be careful. [p. 55]We soldiers have lots of dealings with them. They seem nice enough to me and honest, but it is claimed they are awfully dishonest. When they are faced with the facts of their lying they put on the most pitiful look of innocence. I am trying to find excuses for them when I remember what you told me about them. I don't doubt but the whites would be liars and thieves too if they had been slaves for two hundred years. Whatever I think I won't side with the boys that are abusing them. This I do notice, the boys that I think the best and like the best say the least against the blacks.

Hereafter direct to Cairo. Mail will be forwarded from there.

Your son,

CHAUNCEY.

February 28, 1863

Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, February 28, 1863

Dear sister: Your letter came in due time. It was handed me yesterday by the orderly as I came off guard. You rate me pretty low on composition and spelling but I mean to do better. Yes, I sent my clothes the day before we left Madison. I directed the box in care of Giles Cripps at Trempealeau. Father will have to get it from there. It weighs about 100 pounds. You will know my knapsack by my name stamped on one of the shoulder straps. Barney Bull has a coat in my bundle, all the rest belongs to the Mondovi boys out side of my knapsack. Father should leave their clothes at Yankee Town, (Gilmanton), where their folks will get them. I hope father wont wear my coat. I hate to see a civilian in soldiers dress. If I ever get back it will do me for some time, and if I dont get back give it to some poor soldier in the neighborhood. You did not say anything of my letter written on the eve of leaving Madison for Caire, Illinois. Of course you have it by this time. The sweethearts and wives of the boys from all parts of the state swarmed about the station to say good bye. There were lots of mothers and fathers too. The sweethearts smiled but the mothers and wives shed tears. I saw a few tears in the eyes of some of the married men. It made me think of the song I have heard father sing so many times. Here are two lines: "Go watch the foremost ranks in danger's dark career, Be sure the hand most daring there, has wiped away a tear". There were a thousand handkerchiefs fluttering in the air waving final adieus as the two long trains bearing the 25th. slowly pulled out of the station to begin their journey south. I don't remember what I wrote you about Cario. They say it is a bit like Cario in Egypt. Our Cario has more rats I'll bet, and it is built right in the forks of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. I don't like the people. They are half rebs, never look at a soldier nor speak in passing. There are a lot of steamers tied up here loaded with supplies for Vixburg and other points occupied by our troop.

The site of our camp here in Columbus K. Y. is fine. We can see for miles up and down the river. We are on a high bluff 200 feet higher than the town. The water is not good tho and we drink cold coffee to quench thirst. No enemy can approach us by water and on the landside we throw out pickets every day in a half moon circle touching the river above and below town, so we cannot be taken by surprise from the land. We have a lot of heavy cannon behind strong breast works overlooking the river so that no hostile fleet could reach us. On the land side there seems little danger of attack. Half the people in this part of Kentucky are Union and we would have plenty of warning of any rebel
[p. 25]
advance. I have been on picket duty in the woods some two miles from town twice since coming here. My beat was supposed to keep moving constantly back and forth for two hours at a stretch.

A comrad would be on a similar beat either side of me but one was not allowed to have any conversation with comrades on guard. Say I want to tell you its a lonesome job specially if the night is cloudy and dark. Its an awful good time to think of home and soft warm bed and all that. Then I would say to myself, what's the use. When the stars are shining I always look for the dipper and the north star. They are both a little lower down here than in the north but they look just as friendly as they did in Wisconsin. There is a sort of companionship in the stars when one is alone. I remember how I used to look up at the stars when I was out trapping alone with old Prince, over Traverse Creek or in Borst Valley. The barking of foxes and the snort of passing deer would keep me awake for hours. Old Prince and I slept under the same blankets with nothing over us but the sky.

Ah, but those delightful days are no more and I am here in far away Kentucky. Confound it there goes the drum. It means put on your belts and get out for drill.

Good bye,

CHAUNCEY.

January 6, 1863

January 6, 1863

Hd. Quarters 25th Regt. Wis.

Dear sister: I am sure you would
[p. 20]
smile if you could get a view of Co. G. as I can see them from where I sit. You would say, "What a writing school." I can count more than 40 of the boys writing letters to their mothers or their girls. Mostly to their girls. Its easy to tell, if a fellow is writing to his mother he don't squirm and cover his paper when some guy looks over his shoulder. There is a lot of such teasing. The only way is to get away up in the top bunks out of reach and hold their portfolios on their laps for a desk. I came off guard this morning after the coldest night of the winter. My beat was long side the railroad track on a high bank where the wind cut me from all sides. I set my gun down and run back and forth to keep from freezing my toes. The snow sifted in the path and kept it soft and mealy. The Legislature had some extra work at the capitol last night. I could see the light at the top of the dome until after midnight.

No pay yet though they keep promising it. Went to the Episcopal church last Sunday. Say, don't they [...] style though? I compared them in my mind to our little bunch in that two by four school house in Gilmanton. The preacher came out in a black dress and talked about things I couldn't understand, but the music was nice when I came away. If I was any better in heart, it was because of the music and not for anything the preacher said. A lot of the boys celebrated Christmas and New Year to their sorrow. Some of them were put in jail up town and two of them are there yet. Nearly every other house between here and the Capitol sells beer and by the time the lovers of grog get into town they are full to running over with, `When Johnny comes marching home." There was close to a mutiny of the two regiments here the other day because so many of the boys had been arrested and jailed in the city. The 30th. regiment and several companies of the 25th came out without officers formed in ranks swearing they would go up and storm the city of Madison, if necessary and release their comrades in jail. Feeling ran so high that I took my place in the ranks without much heart in it to tell the truth. I was glad when our officers came around and explained that we were mutineers and in violation of the rules of war and that we should disband.

I had no pity in my heart for the fellows in jail and I was glad for an excuse to sneak back to head quarters. We have some good fellows in our company who are devils when they are in drink. And we have about four who are devils drunk or sober. While I am writing these, the boys are singin Dixie in a great chorus. This awful weather makes us hanker for the warmer south and, since there is no hope of home. All seems quiet on the Potomac.

I see by the papers that the church are urged to pray for the end of the war. They have had several spells at this and the battles have been harder and the slaughter greater. The churches south have been doing the same thing. It would seem that God ought to pity the slave and help our side, but will he? I know what father would say. He would quote Napolson, who said, "put your trust in well drilled troops and keep your powder dry." I remember the last time I heard him say this, when Elder Morse was visiting us and they were talking about the wickedness of slavery about which they both agreed. Father disputed the Elder's opinion that God presided over the movements and affairs of earth. He cited slavery and the wicked wars of the earth and the crimes of the liquor traffic as being inconsistent with the character of a just God. Elder Morse agreed with father this far, that they were not in harmony with the Divine plan, but were tolerated for some reason not given to man to
[p. 21]
know.

Have father tell Elder Morse, I thank him for his kind words. His son Henry is about and able to eat his rations every day. I hope you wont sell your land as you talk of doing. I got a letter from G -- the other day and answered it. He thinks McClellon is a traitor. Lots of us think the same. Our Captain is a wise man and he says McClellon has been waiting and waiting when he should have been marching and fighting. I am awful sorry that Freemont was set down on by Lincoln. I am with Freemont as many of the boys are. I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot go free. Freemont wanted to set them free as fast as we came to them. I am disappointed in Lincoln. I remember a talk father had with uncle Ed. Cartwright, who was blaming the war on the Abolitionists. It made father mad and he talked back pretty hot. He said I have a boy who wants to go to the war and I would give his life as cheerfully as Abraham offered his son if necessary that the slaves might be freed. Father meant all right though it seemed hard, but I love him all the more for it, although I suppose I am the boy he meant for the sacrifice. We are all anxious to go south, though none of us that I know are anxious to get shot for any cause. Direct as before to Camp Randall. Love to all, mother father and brothers.

Your brother.

CHAUNCEY.

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.

July 15, 1863

July 15, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke and Warren Cooke, July 15, 1863Dear Brother:

I have for many days thought of writing to you, first because I like you and second because you are not writing to me as often as you ought.

Since the surrender of Vicksburg on the fourth of this month there has been all sorts of rumors as to our future movements. The late battles won by the army of the Potomac along with the victory over Pemberton here at Vicksburg. somehow makes us boys feel that the end of the war is near. O, if you could have seen and heard what I have these ten days past. Pemberton had nearly 30 thousand all surrendered to Grant on the 4th of this month. And they were glad to be prisoners and paroled to go to their homes. They cursed the war and called it a nigger war. I heard lots of them say that had never owned a nigger, that they were fooled and wished they had stayed at home. The bombardment of Vicksburg the night of the surrender was fearful. The clouds above the city looked blood red as if they were all on fire. The Thunder of the cannon for two or three nights and the rumor of surrender kept us awake. We, that were rather on the sick list with chills [p. 49]and fever, were pretty anxious at the reports that the rebel General Johnson was daily preparing to attack us. Since the surrender the troops by brigades and divisions have gradually withdrawn. All this means that the danger of attack is past.

While I am writing this letter our scouts have brought in word that the rebel General Johnson has been bagged with 65000 troops. Some of the boys are wild over the news, others simply smile and say it's nothing but a false rumor. Whether it is true or false you will know by the papers before this reaches you.

Some of the boys were down to the city of Vicksburg to-day. They said It was a pretty nice place, but it was badly shot up. Nearly half the town had been burned and the streets were torn up by our shells. It costs twenty dollars in confederate money to get a meal, and one dollar in U. S. Greenbacks. The darkies were filling up the town and grinning and showing their white teeth at every corner. Grey headed niggers and pretty quardoons begged the soldiers for money and blessed Abraham Lincoln for sending them south to make them free. Most of the boys hate the blacks and say hard things about them. I never can forget that father told me at Mr. Fuller's place when I got in the wagon. after that awful good dinner. to go to Alma. You remember it brother W. He said, if you ever get a chance, my boy, take good aim and shoot twice to free the black while shooting once for the Union.

I don't dare say anything like this to the boys, because they would laugh at me. But I have read enough to know that Phillips was right and Garrison was right and he thought as they did. And I thought for days after going to I a Crosse of the tears I saw in his eyes as he asked me always to remember the slave.

Well, brother, to change the subject, have you killed any prairie chicks this summer? It is nearly time for pigeons again. Good Lord, how I hope I can be with you to eat speckled trout and prairie chicks his fall.

I am writing this upon my back. The doctor gave me something for my fever that makes my head whirl. When he came to my tent this morning I asked him if I was very sick. When I told him I was seventeen he said, you ought to have been thrashed and kept at home two years longer. I told the doctor that he looked sick himself, and he admitted he was not feeling well. (This doctor died within ten days of the date of this letter.)

Say, how are the neighbors coming? How does Geo. Cartwright behave? Does he and uncle Ed. cock up twice as much hay as you and father? What does Edward Cass busy himself about? Has he and father got that big field fenced in yet? And Maggie C, is she as pretty and haughty as ever? How does Jim Pierce prosper this summer? Has he commenced that brick house he never tired of telling about? I sometimes wish lightning had struck that man, father then might have got a better farm. Pierce took father in just because he was too honest. Do the cows break in the fields any this summer? Does mother make lots of cheese and butter? Great heavens, what butter and cheese mother could make. When those people from St. Louis came through there and praised mother's bread and butter I thought they were fooling, but now I know they were telling the truth. Well, I have got some soft bread to-day noon. some biscuit I bought of a settler. And I have some butter I paid 50 cents for and some coffee. Don't you think I have a first rate supper? Just like the little boy in the third reader who was happy over his porridge alone when he discovered that everything else of the meal had been stolen.

Love to yourself, father, mother and sister D.

Your brother,

CHAUNCEY.

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.

July 25, 1863

July 25, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 25, 1863Dear Mother;

I feel just like writing you to-day. I am sitting in the shade of a big Cypress tree, on the banks of the Yazoo. Looking across the river I can see on some flood trash, two black things looking like alligators. They don't move and I am not sure. There is a pretty spring just below where I sit and a sign over it which says, "Don't drink this water, poison." It is as big as the spring at the head of our spring and as pure looking. It seems strange that we cannot drink out of the springs here that look just as they do in Wisconsin. Some of the boys don't mind the sign. Some that are burning up with fever and thirst manage to stagger down here and fill up with water and go back to their tents and die. Say mother, what would you think if I should say I have some times wished when the fever made me so hot I could hardly stand it that I could go to sleep and never wake up till the war was over. Now this may sound kind of weak for a soldier.

 

But I am no coward, mother. I don't come from that kind of stock. I remember how you put the gun at the head of your bed when father was gone to Fountain City, ready to use it if Indians should come or wild animals attack the cattle. And father came home and he would pat you on the back and say "you are just the girl for a pioneer's wife. I remember these things mother, and under all circumstances I shall never forget that my father and mother were brave people.

I wrote brother Warren the day before getting your letter so I have delayed answering yours. I am a great deal better from chills and a sort of intermittent fever. I have been taking quinine which seems to have broken the chills. I am thankful it is not that other kind of fever that is killing off the boys so fast. 23 men have lately died out of our regiment. There are only about 100 men out of the regiment fit to do duty.

Thank goodness we are about done with this part of the south. The report now is that our entire Brigade will go to Memphis and on up the Tennessee where a northern soldier can live. Two regiments of our brigade have already left, the 3rd Minn. and the 40th Iowa. The 27th Wis. and our regiment will leave soon and then hurrah for a healthier climate. The rebel Gen. Johnson and his Butternut band have skedadled to parts unknown. Of course you have heard of the retreat of Gens. Lee and Bragg, and of the riot of the mob in New York City and the burning of negro asylums and school houses. That mob uprising looked had for the north. It was a Democratic crowd in sympathy with the south. Cost what blood, time and treasure it may, the Union will yet win out.

We were paid off the other day, and to my surprise nothing was taken out for extra clothes drawn. Maybe they will take it out later. We got full pay, $26.

This makes twice we have drawn pay at this place. You ask what general it was that ordered that killing retreat for retreat it was, from Satartia to Haines Bluff? It was General Kemball, a Potomac General, who is now acting General for our corps. We are not in love with him, and some of the boys say he will get shot by his own men the first fight we get into. It is time for roll call and as I am not excused I must quit and go back to camp.

Love to father and the rest,

Your Son,

CHAUNCEY.

July 28, 1863

July 28, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, July 28, 1863Dear Mother:

Your last letter at hand. There is no medicine like a letter from home. Let me tell you mother it does a fellow a lot of good. I am glad you are having such success with the bees. It makes my mouth water for biscuit and honey. I wish you would not take so many chances of getting stung. You ought to wear a veil of cheese cloth over your face. Don't think so much of me. I am all right. We have a plenty to eat. By paying a good round price we can get almost anything good to eat. I wish you would think more of yourself. When I see you in my sleep working in the hayfield helping to get up the hay it troubles me. I suppose as you say that help is hard to get and may be there is no other way. I am careful you may be sure what I eat. Our dainties we get of the sutler, and it is nearly all in cans. I eat a lot of oysters and I find them good for me. That deer that father killed must have come in good play. Don't spoil your relish for it by constantly thinking of me. I told you I am all eight. When I get a dish of oysters I always think how fond father is of them.

You say they are going to get rich in Bennet Valley where father

bought that forty for me. Well I am happy to know that. It may be they will have use for a part of it when the next recruiting officer comes that way. Nor will he, likely as not, waste his eloquence in trying to coax them to enlist as J. A. Brackett did when I enlisted. He will like as not tell them to furnish so many men or stand a draft.

This war ain't over yet. There may be a lot of money paid out for substitutes yet. Just think of it, they are paying as high as a thousand dollars for substitutes in many of the states. It all means that people are getting tired of the fussy way the war is being carried on. If the slaves had been declared free right at the start just as father said and put into the ranks to fight the war might have ended long ago. I see by the papers there are fifty thousand freedmen under arm and they are doing good service. The poor black devils are fighting for their wives and children, yes and for their lives, while we white cusses are fighting for as Capt. Darwin calls an idea, I tell the boys right to their face I am in the war for the freedom of the slave. When they talk about the saving of the Union I tell them that is Dutch to me. I am for helping the slaves if the Union goes to smash. Most of the boys have their laugh at me for helping the "Niggers" but Elder Harwood and Ed Colemen and Julius Parr and Joel Harmon and Chet Ide, the last two of Mondovi, tell me I am right in my argument.

I am sorry father lost that deer. He should take old Prince to help him next time. It is too bad to wound a deer for the wolves to catch and eat up in that way.

We have fresh beef all the time since the surrender. These cane brakes are full of half wild cattle, and they are fat as butter.

I thank brother W. for sending me those stamps. I will send him a book when I get to Memphis. Mother, I wish you would send me a small package of butter by Lieut. MeKay, who is home on furlough for thirty days. I like John McKay. He is a good man. He is a good officer and fair to his men. His wife, I think, is in Modena, where he enlisted, You will see a notice of his arrival in the Alma Journal. For the can of butter you send I want you to reserve a ten dollar greenback for your own especial use out of the sum I send you. Good bye Dear Mother.

Your boy,

CHAUNCEY.

June 11, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke to Doe Cooke, June 11, 1863

Dear Sister:

Am in receipt of your last letter but an hour ago. You do write a good letter. So full of news, just the stuff for a brother in the war to read, and you tell things in such a good way. It's just like a story in a book. You are father's girl all over just as mother has often said. How I wish I could have some of the fish you tell of catching, only I don't like the fellow that took you home that time. He is nice looking and knows how to say pleasant things, but he is what our chaplain calls a roue. Look in the dictionary and see what roue means. I don't want my sister to keep company with a roue, if I understand the word. Let me tell you, my dear girl, most young men ain't as good as they ought to be. And I wish you would be more careful and mind me a little if you are older than I. But I must tell you of things here.

We had a dreadful march from Satartia to reach this place. It was a killing march. Our Division General was a coward, and the march began at sunrise and ended at ten o'clock that night. It was a retreat, a perfect rout. The rebel Johnson was supposed to be close in our rear with a body of cavalry and the orders were to press forward with all possible speed. Through great forests and corn fields without end standing above our heads, in the hottest sun I ever felt, the army became a regular mob, every man for himself. Men threw aside their coats and blankets their testaments and their shirts. Hundreds lay down in the corn rows, under the trees and on the banks of the creeks. Many of them in the faint of a sunstroke, others fanning themselves or cursing those in command. The constant roar of besieging mortar and cannon at Vicksburg grew louder and louder as we advanced. The ambulances and the ammunition and supply wagons that followed were full of men unable to march, long before night. You know that father always said I was mother's boy because I never was tired or never sick till I went into the army. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I had lost sight of every man of Company G, and was marching with a bunch of Indiana boys. I had divided the water with them I had in my canteen. I had thrown away a woollen shirt and torn my blanket in two and left a part of that to lighten my load. My cartridge box was the heaviest thing we had, every man was loaded with all the bullets
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he could carry, for we expected to need them. I was just about fainting with the heat when one of the Indiana boys said, "my boy you better lay down, your face is awful red." We were on the bank of a muddy creek. I walked away from the road up among the trees and after taking a drink from the creek I lay down in the shade of a tree with no one in sight and fell asleep. When I opened my eyes the sun was down and it was just getting dark. For a minute I didn't know where I was nor what had happened. Then the march and the mix-up of the day all came back to me. Here and there I could see through the woods the light of the camp fires. I went back to the road where I left my Indiana friends five hours before. I sat down while a battery of six guns went by, each drawn by six big horses. Then followed a rear guard of five or six hundred cavalry whose sabers and carbines clanged as they rode by. I knew if Johnson was so near, these cannon and cavalry would not be passing toward Vicksburg in this peaceful way. A straggling group of infantry followed the cavalry and I joined them. I had gone but a few steps when I felt a hand upon my shoulder. Turning to see who it was, what was my delight to see the Captain of my company, Captain Darwin, smiling upon me. Like myself he too was lost from the company. The Captain had never looked so good to me. He had laid down by t