Lincoln's Magician

[JMadonna]

(03-12-2019 01:19 PM)L Verge Wrote:  If you have followed this on the above Trivia section, you will see that the Mosby experts I am in contact with are unable to verify the story of Cooke's capture as a Federal Scout and then his escape. One thing does sound unusual about that story - why would a secret agent carry a Lincoln letter of identification with him on missions? Does Mr. Silverman make note of that?

Silverman notes from Cooke's diary:

Cooke and his fellow scouts thus had good cause to be worried about having been captured. In his diary he wrote that Mosby men took all their money and everything else that looked of value and that they had been forced to swap clothes with their captors. “They took, also, my most prized possession, President Lincoln’s letter appointing me a scout:’ Cooke wrote. His pleas to be allowed to keep it were met with laughter.

For more than a day, Mosby and his men marched the small band of Union scouts up the Potomac River. One of them, enraged by Cooke’s brazenness, fired at him three times but fortunately missed his target. When they stopped to camp on the second night, Cooke learned that their captors expected more Mosby Raiders, with additional prisoners, to join them the next day. He feared that all the prisoners would then be hanged or shot as spies in retaliation for Merritt’s execution of Confederate POWs.