Some gleanings from Hazeltine's ~1867 scrapbooks (so, not accurately sourced, but still worth reading):

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A Chess Experience.

Dubuqe, June 9, 1867.

My Dear Sir:

Your kind invitation as to my Chess life will give me a chance to make a clean breast of it to you, so here goes, and you may publish what you please of it. Excuse the egotism, but I can only write in the first person, "I." My father is a metaphysician and in moments of recreation used to play Chess with his children. Thus, when thirteen years of age, I knew the moves of the Chessmen, and the difference between the fool's mate and the scholar's mate. At fourteen I left home for the battle of life, and Chess was forgotten. I saw long tailed Chinaman exhaust their ingenuity in ecentric play, with ivory-carved Chessmen, worth there hundreds of chopped dollars; only to hurry past to more congenial amusements; I saw old fogies in Rio Janeiro playing Chess, as I hurried to the bull fight; and refused to play Chess with my professor at college, that I might revel in, the mysteries of Analytical Mathematics; so life went on and Chess was forgotten. At thirty-three years of age a log cabin in Missouri was my home, buried in the wilderness, no house in sight, 120 miles from the river, peace and plenty reigned in our family. There rose the dark-rolling thunder storm of civil war that has desolated our native land, then came horror and destruction undreamed of, by those whose homes are unmolested, by those who only read of battles fought, as they reclined in shady ease under their own vine and fig tree or played Chess of winter evenings by the blaze of the crackling fires on their own hearth-stones. In 1861 I drove my ox-wagon past the burial place of our only lost child, and as I came North, scenes of joy and plenty hid the desolation beyond Iowa's rolling prairies.

In Iowa city we halted and I went to sell my oxen to a rich man. The servant showed me into an elegantly furnished room, until the speculator in lands, in cattle, in anything and everything that promised money should be at liberty. Near the middle of the room was a Chess table with an elegant set of fancy Chessmen ready set. I stood admiring their beauty and exquisite workmanship, when the owner suddenly entered.

"Ah, ha", said he, "do you know how to play Chess?" "I used to know the moves when a boy," was the reply. The oxen were soon sold, and as I was about to depart, "Wait," said he, "let's see how you play," and he would take no excuse. He won instanter, for placing my Q en prise of one of his P's, she was gobbled at once. The next game he won my Q by a fork of the Kt on K and Q.

"Well”, said he, leaning back, "You might learn to play a little if you didn't give away your Q every time. The Q is the main chance and a man should always look out for the main chance. In vain I urged that I had not played for nearly twenty years, etc. He was on his favorite theme and long did he score and berate my little capacity for Chess, but at same time invited me to return and see if I could not do a little better, at least not give away my Q every time.

I went home cool outwardly but on fire within. I was a madman. It was bad enough to have lost, to have made such great blunders, but to be reviled, ridiculed and twitted with one's misfortunes, that was filling the cup of bitterness too full. Then came the thought of revenge. Hastening to the bookstore. I found a copy of Stanley's little work on Chess, and a cheap set of men, and Thursday came, and I wentup and played that afternoon with Mr. H., alas for study and all my exertions, he won every game.

"Well”, said he, you have improved a little, "but you are such a blunderer, you lose your pieces foolishly and then you don't understand how to handle your men, that's the trouble with so many of our officers in the army, they don't handle their men right, sacrifice them, as you do yours, etc. But come up Saturday afternoon and perhaps you will do better.” So I went home and studied and one day I won a game.