An 1827 graduate of West Point describes military life in the mid-nineteenth century as commander of the famous 'Mormon Battalion' of the US Dragoons, which pulled their wagons over trackless desert to San Diego to rejoin General Kearney in the conquest of California. Commissioned a brigadier general in the Union Army soon after the start of the Civil War, Cooke was given command of the cavalry forces in Washington DC. He served in the Black Hawk and Mexican wars.