Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored). The regiment was organized at Providence, Rhode Island, between August 1863 and January 1864. The
Anglo-African aided the recruitment drive in the last months of 1863. Thomas Hamilton probably managed the matter, while his brother Robert toured the occupied South. (Thomas had previous experience as a recruiter for the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Regiment.) The newspaper advertised the advantages of the Rhode Island regiment and urged would-be volunteers to call at the newspaper's offices: "Remember, 50 Beekman street, if you want reliable information, and someone to attend to any business that you may have in the city after you get into camp! Let there be no delay in this matter!" (December 26, 1863).As members of Company F, Cox and Jefferson belonged to the Fourteenth Regiment's Second Battalion. On January 21, 1864, they left Dutch Island, Rhode Island, on the transport Daniel Webster. Two weeks later, they arrived at New Orleans. An outbreak of measles and mumps prompted military authorities to station the men at English Turn, Louisiana—an outpost where disease could be contained. Unfortunately, English Turn was "decidedly unhealthy"; Captain Addemen recalled that "men were dropping off rapidly from a species of putrid sore throat which was very prevalent. The soil was so full of moisture that we had to use the levee for a burial ground" (quoted in William H. Chenery,
The Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery [Colored] in the War to Preserve the Union, 1861–1865 [Providence: Snow and Farnham, 1898], 32). Chenery's company roster suggests that Cox was the first member of Company F to succumb to disease in Louisiana; both the fact of his death and the form of his burial might have prompted Jefferson to supplement the improvised ceremony with a public statement of grief and esteem.