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| ‘This hero in gray with the heart of gold’ This portrait of a young Confederate volunteer caught the eye of the New York sculptor Ruckstuhl, while he was designing the magnificent monument to be erected in Baltimore by the Maryland Society of the Daughters of the Confederacy. The photograph was taken in April, 1861, when the boy soldier, Henry Howe Cook, had been promoted at the age of seventeen from the ranks of Company D, First Tennessee Regiment, to a lieutenancy in Company F of the Forty-fourth Tennessee, in B. R. Johnson's brigade. At the outbreak of the war proper arms were scarcer in the Confederacy than uniforms. Private Cook's trig costume contrasts sharply with the big hunting-knife and the old-fashioned pistol with its ramrod and percussion trigger. His glance is direct and fearless; yet he is almost too young to look blood-thirsty, even with the lethal weapon thrust in his belt. Working in the spirit which Grady so eloquently describes, he continued to rise after the war was over. As a lawyer he was eminently successful and in after years was honored by the people of Tennessee with the chancellorship in its court system. |
