Civil War
In March and April 1862, Cooke served as an unpaid volunteer aide for Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart in the Confederate cavalry. Cooke was a first cousin of General Stuart's wife, Flora Cooke Stuart. On May 19, 1862, he was formally commissioned as a lieutenant and officially joined Stuart's staff. Cooke participated in the Peninsula Campaign and Stuart's subsequent ride around the Union army of George B. McClellan, later writing a detailed description of the action. During the war, he served Stuart as an aide, ordnance officer, and assistant adjutant general, earning the rank of captain. Following Stuart's death at Yellow Tavern in May 1864, Cooke served on other generals' staffs, eventually rising to the rank of major by the end of the war. In 1863, he wrote the first of several popular biographies of Stonewall Jackson. He also published a novel on Jackson, Surry of Eagle's Nest (1866) as well as a biography of Robert E. Lee, officers that he had personally known.
Read more about this topic: John Esten Cooke
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)