103 Autograph Letters Signed of Lowell C. Cook, approximately 300 pp, 8vo and 4to, various places, including Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, September 6, 1862 to December 19, 1865, to his sister Mrs. John R. (Sally) Hayward, giving vivid details of Army life, and often including impromptu diaries, most with original transmittal envelopes, condition generally good. With transcriptions of letters and research material compiled in the 1960s by Wendell Williams. Provenance: by descent through the Hayward family to Bertha A. Clark of Milford, MA; gifted by Clark to George Ellis; gifted by Ellis to Wendell Williams; by descent to the present owner. An extensive correspondence between a young Union soldier and his sister. Lowell C. Cook was born in Mendon, MA in 1838. As a young man he attended the Wilbraham Academy in that town, then enlisted in the Army in June of 1861, joining the Second Regiment of Company I, Rhode Island Volunteers. He wrote letters to his sister nearly every week, during which period he saw service at the First Battle of Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania (Wilderness). At the last, he was shot through the shoulder and mustered out, re-enlisting in 1865 in Company B, First Regiment, Hancock Veteran Reserve Corps. The correspondence opens with a description of the battle and town at Sharpsburg: "we had a chance to view the battleground unmolested, it was an awful sight you may well believe, every house in the village of Sharpsburg is riddled with shot and shell, one building close by where the hottest of the fight was completely torn to pieces, the fields, roads, cornfields for miles are scattered over with dead men and horses" (September 23, 1862). In an 1863 letter, Cook describes his days picketing on the Rappahanock River, chatting with CSA pickets on the other shore until stopped by their officers. More than the battle content—which is quite extensive, covering Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania—the archive also gives a vivid detail of everyday military life during the war. Cook describes the tedious process of marching from one camp to the next: "We left camp at nine o-clock and marched off in the direction of Culpepper, passed through there at half past eleven and at one in the afternoon passed the extreme outposts of the picket line ... The next morning we started again at about the same hour as the day before and kept on till after noon when we crossed Robinsons River and proceeded about a mile further and stopped. This was as far as we went, within two miles of Madison Court House" (March 4, 1864). He also tells us about the world that subsists at the edge of the military: "You may not be surprised any time to hear that this little army of the Potomac is on the tramp. Sutlers, Peddlers, Photographers and all hangers on of the army have left, cleared out yesterday or nearly all, according to orders from Mr Grant. I am glad they are gone take it all around though a little butter to eat on bread does not go very bad, but they had got to bringing any quantity of whiskey into the army and drunkenness had become too common, there is not a day now that passes without there being a great many of the men drunk as fools. The price they pay is three dollars a canteen or a dollar pint, pretty high price for the poison, aint it" (April 17, 1864)? And, not surprisingly, since Cook is still a relatively young man, he gleefully gives his poor sister the scatological lowdown, reporting on the intestinal distress he suffers after several large meals of beans and sheepishly reporting that he is punished for defecating outside of the latrine area.
103 Autograph Letters Signed of Lowell C. Cook, approximately 300 pp, 8vo and 4to, various places, including Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, September 6, 1862 to December 19, 1865, to his sister Mrs. John R. (Sally) Hayward, giving vivid details of Army life, and often including impromptu diaries, most with original transmittal envelopes, condition generally good. With transcriptions of letters and research material compiled in the 1960s by Wendell Williams. Provenance: by descent through the Hayward family to Bertha A. Clark of Milford, MA; gifted by Clark to George Ellis; gifted by Ellis to Wendell Williams; by descent to the present owner. An extensive correspondence between a young Union soldier and his sister. Lowell C. Cook was born in Mendon, MA in 1838. As a young man he attended the Wilbraham Academy in that town, then enlisted in the Army in June of 1861, joining the Second Regiment of Company I, Rhode Island Volunteers. He wrote letters to his sister nearly every week, during which period he saw service at the First Battle of Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania (Wilderness). At the last, he was shot through the shoulder and mustered out, re-enlisting in 1865 in Company B, First Regiment, Hancock Veteran Reserve Corps. The correspondence opens with a description of the battle and town at Sharpsburg: "we had a chance to view the battleground unmolested, it was an awful sight you may well believe, every house in the village of Sharpsburg is riddled with shot and shell, one building close by where the hottest of the fight was completely torn to pieces, the fields, roads, cornfields for miles are scattered over with dead men and horses" (September 23, 1862). In an 1863 letter, Cook describes his days picketing on the Rappahanock River, chatting with CSA pickets on the other shore until stopped by their officers. More than the battle content—which is quite extensive, covering Bull Run, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania—the archive also gives a vivid detail of everyday military life during the war. Cook describes the tedious process of marching from one camp to the next: "We left camp at nine o-clock and marched off in the direction of Culpepper, passed through there at half past eleven and at one in the afternoon passed the extreme outposts of the picket line ... The next morning we started again at about the same hour as the day before and kept on till after noon when we crossed Robinsons River and proceeded about a mile further and stopped. This was as far as we went, within two miles of Madison Court House" (March 4, 1864). He also tells us about the world that subsists at the edge of the military: "You may not be surprised any time to hear that this little army of the Potomac is on the tramp. Sutlers, Peddlers, Photographers and all hangers on of the army have left, cleared out yesterday or nearly all, according to orders from Mr Grant. I am glad they are gone take it all around though a little butter to eat on bread does not go very bad, but they had got to bringing any quantity of whiskey into the army and drunkenness had become too common, there is not a day now that passes without there being a great many of the men drunk as fools. The price they pay is three dollars a canteen or a dollar pint, pretty high price for the poison, aint it" (April 17, 1864)? And, not surprisingly, since Cook is still a relatively young man, he gleefully gives his poor sister the scatological lowdown, reporting on the intestinal distress he suffers after several large meals of beans and sheepishly reporting that he is punished for defecating outside of the latrine area.
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