It may be of interest, and certainly it belongs to the history of the Battalion, to say that its commanding officer and the two lieutenants of the regular army, his staff officers, rose later to honorable distinction during the war between the States.

Colonel Cooke.—Col. Cooke, after returning to the east with Stephen W. Kearny, continued in the military service of the United States and was active in the Kansas-Nebraska troubles of the early fifties. In 1857-8 he commanded the cavalry in the Johnston expedition to Utah; and it is of record that when that command passed through the streets of Salt Lake City, en route from the mouth of Emigration Canyon to the place of its encampment west of the Jordan, the Colonel rode with uncovered head, through the city; "out of respect to the brave men of the Mormon Battalion he had commanded in their march to the Pacific."

For a time after the departure of Albert Sidney Johnston for the east, or rather to the south,—for that officer espoused the cause of the Southern Confederacy, against the Union, Col. Cooke for a time was in command of "Johnston Army" at Camp Floyd, in Cedar Valley, west of Utah Lake.

During the Civil War Col. Cooke though a Virginian served on the side of the Union army, and rose through the grade of brigadier general (1861), to the rank of brevet Major General (1865).

Lieut. A. J. Smith.—Lieutenant A. J. Smith in the same war rose from the grade of commander of California volunteers to that of brigadier general of volunteers (1862); and to major general of volunteers (1864). In the battle of Nashville he commanded the sixteenth corps of General Thomas' right, and received the brevet of major general in the regular army for his services in that battle.

Lieut. George Stoneman.—Lieutenant George Stoneman in 1861 was in command at Fort Brown, Texas, with the rank of captain. Later he was in command of the Union cavalry in the Peninsula campaign. After the death of General Philip Kearny, at Chantilly, Stoneman took the command of the fallen general's division, and commanded the Third Corps at Fredericksburg. At Chancellorsville he commanded the federal cavalry. In a raid upon Andersonville, the object of which was to liberate the federal soldiers imprisoned there, he was captured by the confederates. After the war he was in command of one of the many military departments created by the government; and from 1883 to 1887 was governor of California.