Henry B. Drake was born around 1837 in Greenville, Illinois, to Jacob and Elizabeth Drake. His father was a physician who owned $3,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Bond County, Illinois, and by 1860, he was working as a farmer. He married Miriam E. Harlan on December 29, 1859. Their son Edward was born in the early 1860s, but he died in March 1863. By 1860, they owned $3,100 of real estate and $400 of personal property.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 12, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company E of the 130th Illinois Infantry on October 25, 1862. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 9 inches tall, with light hair and grey eyes. In December 1862, he wrote that he was “no negro worshiper.” When he observed “guards put around a house to prevent the negroes [in Memphis] from being disturbed,” he wrote that he did “not believe in white men acting as watches for negroes it looks a little too much like abolitionism to suit me.” Nonetheless, he supported the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring it a “good way to weaken the rebel army.”
He desperately missed his wife and son, and he expressed regret that he had enlisted in the army. “I am determined,” he wrote in January 1863, “that if I should get home again not to let my patriotism run away with my better judgment again.” Nonetheless, he remained fiercely loyal to the Union, and he denounced the “traitors…in the state of Illinois” who undermined the war effort. He denounced the “unholy rebellion,” and he prayed that “peace and prosperity shall bless our nation as it has in time past and gone.” The regiment took part in the Vicksburg campaign, and he died at Vicksburg on May 22, 1863.