He appears to be handing a message to a subordinate. The African American man in the background looks to be holding a blanket to adjust lighting for the photograph.
Source.
"In 1861 he enlisted as a private in the Texas Army, and was under Van Dorn in the capture of Federal troops and stores in this State. In the same year, he became a private in the Eighth Confederate Cavalry, Terry's Texas Rangers. Here he was promoted successively to be Sergeant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel. He joined General Albert Sidney Johnson at Bowling Green, Kentucky, and remained with the Army of Tennessee up to the surrender, in 1865. He was with his regiment in over two hundred engagements; among them Woodsonville, Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Resaca, Marietta, Atlanta, Smithville, N. C., and Bentonville, in the same State. At Shiloh, his right leg was broken by a musket ball; at Farmington, Tennessee, he was shot through the right arm, and received a shot through the right hand that fractured every bone in it, disfiguring, and almost disabling it; at Buck-head Church, Georgia, he was wounded, by a minie ball, through the right ankle, and at Bentonville he was shot through the right shoulder, the ball lodging in the rear of the lung. He received six or seven wounds during the war, and the scars he wears tell a tale of courage and gallantry and heroism far more eloquent than the praise of his biographer. He had voted for secession, and he offered his life to secure it.
When Colonel Cook reached home, at the close of the conflict, in 1865, he was a mere wreck, weighing only 118 pounds. Broken down in health, he was also bleeding from his wounds every hour in the day. Nor was this all: he was ruined in fortune and involved in an enormous debt, and he immediately prepared to retrieve the one and discharge the other, though the latter alone required fourteen years." Source.
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