This story has intrigued me from the first time I heard of it. In fact, I even wrote about it before. A friend sent me an article from a 1920 LA newspaper and it rekindled my interest in the story. So I'm reprinting my original article below with a couple corrections. These corrections came about by reading an article in the Los Angeles Evening Herald Feb 12th, 1920 edition. In truth, they really fill in more of the blanks than truly correct things. I hope you enjoy the updated article.
The individual in question is Horatio Green Cooke, born 1844 in Norwich Connecticut. As a youth his family moved around a bit finally settling in Iowa. In 1861, Horatio was working as a teacher. In
1862, Horatio, who would go by the name
Harry, enlisted in the Union Army. He had excellent penmanship and was also a fine marksman. Before long he was writing correspondence for various Generals in the Union Army, among them General U.S. Grant.
Due to Cooke's ability as a penman, he soon came to the notice of various people in Washington DC. His ability as a marksman, also played a part in his change in career and in rank.
He went from being a private in the Union Army to being selected to be as a Captain of
Lincoln's Federal Scouts.
He always carried with him a letter autographed by the President Lincoln informing him that he had been selected to be one of his special scouts. In 1863, he fell under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant
during the Siege of Vicksburg. The surrender of Vicksburg by the
Confederate Army gave control of the Mississippi River to the Union
Army, and basically split the Confederacy in half. This event, along
with the Battle of Gettysburg, were the turning points in the war for
the Union.
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| R. Ingersoll, Gen Hancock, E. Stanton, Gen Sherman, A. Lincoln |
On May 1st, 1864, Harry Cooke was ordered to appear before
Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War in Washington D.C.. When he arrived he found that along with Stanton, was
General William Tecumseh Sherman,
General Hancock, Senator
Robert Ingersoll and
President Abraham Lincoln.
They had heard of the young scouts unusual ability to free himself from
restraints and were curious. So he was tied up with fifty feet of rope.
After he was securely tied, Cooke asked Lincoln to walk ten feet away.
Then he asked him to return and before Lincoln got back, Cooke had freed
himself from the confinement! According to the Los Angeles Evening
Express Newspaper, Lincoln was
amazed and jubilated. Lincoln said
to Cooke "Here my boy, keep this to remember Uncle Abe by" and Lincoln
then handed Cooke a two dollar bill. Harry Cooke kept that two dollar
bill his entire life.
 |
| John Singleton Mosby - The Grey Ghost |
In the Fall of 1864, Harry was assigned to join General
Sheridan in Winchester VA. On October 19th, Harry Cooke and six other
scouts were captured by Mosby's Raiders under the command of 'The Grey
Ghost',
John Singleton Mosby*.
Mosby was notorious for his stealth-like raids against Union forces.
When his band of raiders captured Harry Cooke and his fellow scouts they
took from them all their possessions. In Cooke's pocket was the personal
letter from Lincoln appointing him to the position of Federal Scout, a
cherished memento. In Mosby's eyes Cooke was a spy and was sentenced to
be hanged along with his other scouts. They were to get an early morning
hanging, but their final evening on earth would be spent tied to a
tree. Being the escape artist that he was, Cooke quietly freed himself
from the ropes, and then proceeded to free his fellow prisoners and
return back to the Union side under the cover of darkness. Due to the fact that not all of his fellow scounts could swim, they had to split up. Three swam across the Potomac River and the
others made their way through the woods. One of the scouts who was swimming later drowned when trying to cross Harpers Ferry Canal. Cooke and his companion finally made it back to a Union camp. From there, he took some men back to try and find those scouts who chose to make their way through the woods because they couldn't swim. They were eventually discovered, hanged and full of bullet holes. In the end, only Cooke and his other fellow scout that he swam with made it to safety.
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| Fords Theatre /Library of Congress photo |
Harry had always been bothered by the theft of his
Lincoln Letter by Mosby's Raiders and decided to try and get a copy from
the President himself. On April 14th 1865, Cooke went to the White House in
Washington to see Mr. Lincoln. Upon arriving at the White House he was
told that Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had left for an evening at
Fords Theatre.
Harry Cooke went to Fords Theatre, where the President and First Lady
were watching the play "Our American Cousin". A short time after Harry
Cooke arrived a loud shot rang out, and well, the rest is history. Cooke
was there, in the audience, as John Wilkes Booth shot the President and
then jumped to the stage and out the back doors of Fords Theatre.
It's hard to say when Harry Cooke got his interest in magic or where he developed the ability to escape from ropes. One thing is certain, he had an ability to
escape like no one before him, and few since. After the Civil War ended Horatio Green Cooke became
"Professor Harry Cooke" and worked as a professional magician and
'Celebrated King of the Spirit Exposers". Years later he would become
President of the Los Angeles Society of Magicians and would obtain the
new moniker 'The Oldest Living Magician'. His favorite trick throughout
his life was the Linking Rings and apparently his routine was one to
wonder over.
On May 1st 1924, at the young age of 80, Harry Cooke duplicated his feat
of escaping from 50 feet of rope for the Los Angeles area magicians.
During this exhibition, Harry Cooke wore his blue Union Army uniform,
the same one he wore during the Civil War. The result was exactly as it
had been 60 years earlier when he presented the stunt before President
Lincoln and his cabinet, HE ESCAPED! A a little over a month later Horatio Green
Cooke passed away on June 17, 1924.
I must make note of the fact that though Harry Cooke was well known during his day, and appeared often in magic periodicals of his time period, and was even one of the pallbearers at Harry Kellar's funeral, he had largely been forgotten in recent years. It was Mark Cannon, escape artist and magician who brought the wonderful stories of Harry Cooke back to life through a fantastic article he wrote for MUM Magazine in April 2006. Mark had actually been fortunate enough to meet one of Harry Cooke's daughters at one of his shows and was given Cooke's personal scrap book. And it was because of Mark's wonderful article and my interest in magic history that I first started to delve into the world of Harry Cooke. Eventually, I too got to meet one of Cooke's descendants. You gotta love magic history, you never know where it will take you or who you might encounter!
