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Born in Leesburg, Virginia, on June 13, 1809, Philip St. George
Cooke graduated from the US Military Academy in 1827. He
served in frontier conflicts, the Black Hawk War and the Mexican
War, serving as a dragoon officer, a cavalry tactician and an
explorer of the West. In the late 1850s, was as a US observer in the
Crimean War.
Colonel Cooke was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Regular
Army in November of 1861. Given command of the cavalry forces in
Washington, D.C., during McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, Cooke led a
cavalry division in front of Yorktown, and at the Battles of
Williamsburg, Gaines' Mill and White Oak Swamp.
For the rest of the war, Cooke served in administrative
capacities. Until August of 1863, he served on a courts-martial,
commanded the Baton Rouge until May of 1864, and led the Union's
recruiting service until the end of the war.
Cooke's son, John R. Cooke, became a Confederate general; while
two of his daughters joined the Confederate cause, one marrying
Confederate cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart. One of his daughters
remained loyal to the Union.
Brevetted a major general in March of 1865, he continued
fulfilling administrative duties until his retirement in October of
1873. During his retirement, Cooke wrote books about his life in the
army. He died in Detroit, Michigan, on March 20, 1895. |
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