A Boy Trooper With Sheridan

CHAPTER I

More than He Bargained for – The War Fever and How it Affected the Boys – A Disbanded Cavalryman – Going to School in Uniform – Cousin Tom from Shiloh? – Running Away to Enlist – The Draft – In the Griswold Cavalry – Habeas Corf used.

IN the local columns of the Troy (N. Y.) Daily Times of September 1, 1863, the following news:

“A few days ago one Stanton P. Allen of Berlin, enlisted in Capt. Boutelle’s company of the twenty-first (Griswold) cavalry. We are not informed whether it was Stanton’s bearing the same name as the Secretary of War, or his mature cast of countenance that caused him to be accepted; for he was regarded as nineteen years of age, while, in reality but fourteen summers had passed over his youthful, but ambitious brow. Stanton received a portion of his bounty and invested himself in one of those ‘neat, but not gaudy’ yellow and blue suits that constitute the uniform of the Griswold boys. A few days intervened. Stanton’s ‘parients,’ on the vine-clad hills of Berlin, heard that their darling boy had ‘gone for a sojer.’ Their emotions were indescribable. ‘So young and yet so valiant,’ thought his female relatives. ‘How can I get him out?’ was the more practical query of his papa. The ways the ways and means were soon discovered. A writ of habeas corpus was procured from Judge Robertson, and as the proof was clear that Stanton was only fourteen years old, he was duly discharged from the service of the United States. But the end was not yet. A warrant was issued for the recruit, charging him with obtaining bounty and uniform under false pretenses, and a release from the military service proved only a transfer to the civil power. Stanton found that he had made a poor exchange of ‘situations,’ and last evening gave bail before Judge Robertson in the sum of five hundred dollars.”

In order that the correctness of history may not be questioned, the subject of the above deems it expedient to place on record an outline of the circumstances leading up to the incident related by the Times.

At the breaking out of the war my father resided in Berlin, N. Y., on the Brimmer farm, three miles or so from the village. I was twelve years old, but larger than many lads of sixteen. I was attacked by the war fever as soon as the news that Fort Sumter had been fired on reached the Brimmer farm. Nathaniel Bass worked for my father that year. The war fever got hold of Nat after haying was over, and one night along in the latter part of August, he said to me:

“I’m going to war.”

“You don’t mean it, Nat?”

“Yes, I do. The fall’s work won’t last long, and they say they’re paying thirteen dollars a month and found for soldiers. That’s better’n doing chores for your board.”

“If you do go I’ll run away and enlist.”

“No; you’re too young to go to war. You must wait till you’re an able-bodied man-that’s what the bills call for.”

“O, dear! I’m afraid you’ll whip all the rebels before I can get there.”

I cried myself to sleep that night.

How I envied Nat when he came home on a three days’ furlough clad in a full suit of cavalry uniform! He enlisted September 20, 1861, in the Second New York cavalry. The regiment was known as the Northern Black-horse cavalry. Nat allowed me to try on his jacket, and I strutted about in it for an hour or so. I felt that even in wearing it for a short time I was doing something toward whipping the Southerners. But Bass’s furlough came to an end, and he returned to his regiment.

Nat came back in time to help us plant in the spring of 1862. The regiment went as far as Camp Stoneman, near Washington, where it remained in winter quarters. It was not accepted by the United States Government, and was never mounted. The reason given was that the Government had more cavalry than it could handle, and the Northern Black-horse cavalry was disbanded. The regiment was raised by Colonel Andrew J. Morrison, who subsequently served with distinction at the head of a brigade.

Nat came home “chock-full” of war stories. He was just as much a hero in my estimation as he would have been if the rebels had shot him all to pieces. I never tired of listening to his yarns about the experiences of the regiment at Camp Stoneman. He had not seen a rebel, dead or alive, but that was not his fault. Nat was something of a singer, and he had a song describing the adventures of his regiment. The soldiers were referred to as “rats.” I recall one verse and the chorus:

I would join in the chorus, and although I did not understand the sentiment – if there was any in the song – I was ready to adopt it as a national hymn.

I was the proudest boy in the Brimmer district at the opening of school the next winter. I fairly “paralyzed” the teacher, George Powell, and all the scholars, when I marched in wearing Nat’s cavalry jacket and forage cap. He had made me a present of them. I was the lion of the day. The jacket fitted me like a sentry-box, but the girls voted the rig “perfectly lovely.” Half a dozen big boys threatened to punch my eyes out if I did not “leave that ugly old jacket at home.” I enjoyed the notoriety, and continued to wear the jacket. But one day Jim Duffy, a boy who worked for Tom Jones, came into the school with an artillery jacket on. It was of the same pattern as the jacket I wore, but had red trimmings in place of yellow. The girls decided that Jim’s jacket was the prettier. I made up my mind to challenge Jim at the afternoon recess, but my anger moderated as I heard one of the small girls remark:

“But Jim ain’t got no sojer cap, so he ain’t no real sojer – he’s only a make-b’lief.”

“Sure enough!” chorused the girls.

Then I expected Duffy to challenge me, but he did not, and there was no fight.

That same winter Thomas Torrey of Williamstown came to our house visiting. Tom was one of the first to respond to the call for volunteers to put down the rebellion. He was in the Western army, and fought under Grant at Shiloh. He received a wound in the second day’s fight, May 7, 1862, that crippled him for life. He had his right arm extended to ram home a cartridge, when a rebel bullet struck him in the wrist. The ball shattered the bone of the forearm and sped on into the shoulder, which it disabled. Tom’s good right arm was useless forever after.

Tom was a better singer than Bass, and as we claimed him as our cousin, it seemed as if our family had already shed blood to put down the rebellion.

While the wounded soldier remained at our house and told war stories and sang the patriotic songs of the day, my enthusiasm was kept at one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. I made up my mind that I would go to war or “bust a blood vessel.” I assisted in dressing Tom’s shattered arm once or twice, but even that did not quench the patriotic fire that had been kindled in my breast by Bass’s war stories and fanned almost into a conflagration by Tom’s recital of his experiences in actual combat.

I discarded Nat’s “Lally boo” and transferred my allegiance to a stirring song sung by Tom:

I laid awake nights and studied up plans to go to Pittsburg Landing and run a bayonet through the rebel who shot “Cousin Tom.”

The summer of 1862 was a very trying time. Charley Taylor of Berlin, opened a recruiting office in the village and enlisted men for Company B, One hundred and twenty-fifth New York volunteers. I wanted to go, but when I suggested it to my father he remarked:

“They don’t take boys who can’t hoe a man’s row. You’ll have to wait five or six years.”

When the Berlin boys came home on furlough from Troy, to show themselves in their new uniforms and bid their friends good-by, it seemed to me that my chances of reaching the front in time to help put down the rebellion, were slim indeed. I reasoned that if Nat Bass could have driven the rebels into Richmond alone – as he said he could have done if he had been given an opportunity – the war would be brought to a speedy close when Company B was turned loose upon the Confederates in Virginia. It seemed that nearly everybody was going in Company B except Bass and I. I urged Nat to go, but he said it would be considered “small potatoes for a man who had served in the cavalry to re-enlist in the infantry.” If I had not overlooked the fact that Nat had never straddled a horse during his six months’ service in Col. Morrison’s regiment, I might have questioned the consistency of Bass’s position.

The One hundred and twenty-fifth left Troy Saturday, August 30, 1862, and on the same day the second battle of Bull Run was fought, resulting in the retreat of the Union Army into the fortifications around Washington.

“I told you so,” said Bass, when the news of the battle reached Berlin. “The boys in Company B will have their hands full. They will reach the front in time to take part in this fall’s campaign. I shall wait till next summer, and then if there’s a call for another cavalry regiment to fight the rebels, I’ll go down and help whip ‘em some more.”

When the news of Grant’s glorious capture of Vicksburg, and Meade’s splendid victory at Gettysburg, was received in Berlin, I made up my mind that the crisis had arrived. I said to Bass:

“Nat, our time’s come.”

“How so?”

“We’ve waited a year, and they’ve called for another regiment of cavalry.”

“Then I believe I’ll go.”

“So’ll I.”

“Where’s the regiment being raised?”

“In Troy.”

“Will your father let you go?”

“Of course not – don’t say a word to him. But I tell you, Nat, I’m going. The Union armies are knocking the life out of the rebels east and west, and it’s now or never. I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to war.”

I was only a boy – born February 20, 1849 – but thanks to an iron constitution, splendid health and a vigorous training in farm work, I had developed into a lad who would pass muster for nineteen almost anywhere.

Bass got away from me. My father drove to Troy with Nat, who enlisted August 7, in Company E, of the Griswold cavalry. The regiment was taken to the front and into active service by the late General William B. Tibbits of Troy.

About the first of August a circus pitched its tents in Berlin. Everybody went to the show. While the acrobats were vaulting about in the ring, a lad in a cavalry uniform entered the tent and took a seat not far from where I was sitting. The circus was a tame affair to me after that. A live elephant was nowhere when a boy in blue was around.

“Who’s that soldier?” I asked my best girl.

“That’s Henry Tracy; I wish he’d look this way. He’s too sweet for anything.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Off the mountain, from the Dutch settlement near the Dyken pond. Isn’t he lovely! What a nobby suit!”

When the circus was out, I managed to secure an interview with the “bold sojer boy,” who informed me that he was in the same camp with Bass at Troy.

“How old are you?” I asked Tracy.

“I’m just eighteen,” he answered, with a wink that gave me to understand that I was not to accept the statement as a positive fact.

“Do you think they’d take me?”

“Certainly; you’re more’n eighteen.”

“When are you going back?”

“Shall start to-night. Think you’ll go along?”

“Yes; if you really think they’ll take me.”

“I’m sure they will; you just let me manage the thing for you.”

“All right; I’m with you.”

I went with Tracy that night – after he had seen his girl home. As we climbed the steep mountain, I expected every minute to hear the footsteps of a brigade of relatives in pursuit. We reached the Tracy domicile about midnight, and went to bed. I could not sleep. The frogs in the pond near the house kept up a loud chorus, led by a bull-frog with a deep bass voice. I had heard the frogs on other occasions when fishing in the mountain lakes, and the boys agreed that the burden of the frog chorus was:

Somehow the chorus seemed that night to have been changed. As I lay there and listened for the sound of my father’s wagon, the frogs sang after this fashion:

And, oh! how that old bull-frog with the bass voice came in on the chorus:

We got up at daylight, and walked over to the plank road and waited for the stage from Berlin to come along, en route to Troy. When the vehicle came in sight, I hid in the bushes until Tracy could reconnoiter and ascertain if iny father was on board. He gave a signal that the coast was clear, and we took passage for the city.

“You’re Alex Allen’s boy?” the driver – Frank Maxon – said, as we took seats in the stage.

“What about it?”

“I heard ‘em say at the post-office this morning that you’d run away.”

“False report,” said Tracy; “he’s just going to Troy to bid me good-by.”

“Well, he must be struck on you, as they say he never set eyes on you till yesterday.”

The stage rattled into Troy about half-past ten o’clock. There was considerable excitement in the city over the draft. Soldiers were camped in the court-house yard and elsewhere. They were Michigan regiments, I think. There was a section of artillery in the yard of the hotel above the tunnel. I could not understand how it was that the Government was obliged to resort to a draft to secure soldiers. To me it seemed that an ablebodied man who would not volunteer to put down the rebellion, was pretty “small potatoes.”

But I was only a boy. Older persons did not look at it in the same light as I did. By the way, the draft euchred our family out of three hundred dollars. When I enlisted in the First Massachusetts, after the failure of my plan to reach Dixie in the Griswold cavalry, I was paid three hundred dollars bounty. I sent it home to my father. The draft “scooped him in,” and the Government got the three hundred dollars back, that being the sum the drafted men were called on to pay to secure exemption.

Tracy escorted me to Washington Square, where there were several tents in which recruiting officers were enlisting men for the Griswold cavalry. A bounty of two dollars was paid to each person bringing in a recruit. Tracy sold me to a sergeant named Cole for two dollars, but he divided the money with me on the way to camp. As we entered the tent where Sergeant Cole was sitting, Tracy said:

“This young man wants to enlist, Sergeant.”

“All right, my boy; how old are you – nineteen, I suppose?”

“Of course he’s nineteen,” said Tracy.

I did not contradict what my soldier friend had said, and the sergeant made out my enlistment papers, Tracy making all the responses for me as to age. After I had been “sworn in” for three years, or during the war, I was paid ten dollars bounty. Then we went up to the barracks, and I was turned over to the first sergeant of Captain George V. Boutelle’s company. I drew my uniform that night. The trousers had to be cut off top and bottom. The jacket was large enough for an overcoat. The army shirt scratched my back – but what is the use of reviving dead issues!

One day orders came for Capt. Boutelle’s company to “fall in for muster.” The line was formed down near the gate. I was in the rear rank on the left. The mustering officer stood in front of the company with the roll in his hand. Just at this time, my father with a deputy sheriff arrived with the habeas corpus, which was served on Capt. Boutelle, and I was ordered to “fall out.”

Then we went to the city, to the office of Honorable Gilbert Robertson, Jr., provost judge, and after due inquiry had been made as to “the cause of detention by the said Capt. Boutelle of the said Stanton P. Allen,” the latter “said” was declared to be discharged from Uncle Sam’s service. My father refunded the ten dollars bounty, and offered to return the uniform, but Capt. Boutelle refused to accept the clothes, charging that I had obtained property from the Government under false pretenses. Under that charge I was held in five hundred dollars bail, as stated in the Times, but the court remarked to my father that “that’ll be the end of it, probably, as the captain will be ordered to the front, and there will be no one here to prosecute the case.”

As we were leaving Judge Robertson’s office, a policeman arrested me. He marched me toward the jail. Pointing to the roof of the prison he said:

“My son, I’m sorry for you.”

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.

“Put you in jail.”

“What for?”

“Defrauding the Government. But I’m sorry to see you go to jail. They may keep you there for life. They’ll keep you there till the war is over, any way, for people are so busy with the war that they can’t stop to try cases of this kind. You are charged with getting into the army without your father’s consent. Maybe they won’t hang you, but it’ll go hard with you, sure. I don’t want to see you die in prison. If I thought you’d go home and not run away again, I’d let you escape.” That was enough. I double-quicked it up the street and hid in the hotel barn where my father’s team was until he came along. I was ready to go home with him. I did not know at that time that the arrest, after I had been bailed, was a put-up job. It was intended to frighten me. And it worked to a charm. It was a regular Bull Run affair.

CHAPTER II

The War Fever Again – Going to a Shooting Match – Over the Mountains to Enlist – A Question of Age – Sent to Camp Meigs – The Recruit and the Corporal – The Trooper’s Outfit – A Cartload of Military Traps – Paraded for Inspection – An Officer who Had Been through the Mill.

I RETURNED to Berlin very much discouraged. There had not been anything pleasant about our camp life in Troy – the food was poorly cooked, the camp discipline was on the go-as-you-please order at first, and sleeping on a hard bunk was not calculated to inspire patriotism in lads who had always enjoyed the luxury of a feather bed. Yet the thought that I was a Union soldier, and a Griswold cavalryman to boot, had acted as an offset to the hardships of camp life, and after my return home the “war fever” set in again. The relapse was more difficult to prescribe for than the first attack. The desire to reach the front was stimulated by the taunts of the wiseacres about the village who would bear down on me whenever I chanced to be in their presence, as follows:

“Nice soldier, you are!”

“How do the rebels look?”

“Sent for your father to come and get you, they say.”

“Did they offer you a commission as jigadier brindle?”

“When do you start again?”

Quite a number of the boys about the village and from the back hollows interviewed me now and then in respect of my army experience. I was a veteran in their estimation. After several conferences, a company of “minute-men” was organized. We started with three members – Irving Waterman, Giles Taylor and myself. I was elected captain, Waterman first lieutenant and Taylor second lieutenant. We could not get any of the other boys to join as privates. They all wanted to be officers, so we secured no recruits. It was decided that we would run away and enlist at the first opportunity. Taylor was considerable of a “boy” as compared with Waterman and myself, as he was married and a legal voter. Waterman was nearly two years my senior, but as I had “been to war” they insisted that I should take the lead and they would follow.

We finally fixed upon Thanksgiving Day in November, 1863, the time to start for Dixie. Waterman had scouted over around Williamstown, and he came back with the report that two Williams College students were raising a company of cavalry. Thanksgiving morning I informed my mother that I was going to a shooting match. It proved to be more of a shooting match than I expected. The minute-men met at a place that had been selected, and started for Dixie.

At the Mansion House, Williamstown, we introduced ourselves to Lieutenant Edward Payson Hopkins, son of a Williams College professor. The lieutenant was helping his cousin, Amos L. Hopkins, who had been commissioned lieutenant and who expected to be a captain, to raise a company.

“As soon as he secures his quota, I shall enlist for myself,” said the lieutenant, who added, that we could put our names down on his roll and he would go with us to North Adams, at which place we could take cars for Pittsfield, where Captain Hopkins’s recruiting office was located. We rode to North Adams in a wagon owned by Professor Hopkins and which was pressed into service for the occasion by the professor’s soldier son. The lieutenant handled the lines and the whip, he and I occupying the seat, and Taylor and Waterman sat on a board placed across the wagon behind.

At North Adams we were taken into an office where we were examined by the town war committee.

One of the committee was Quinn Robinson, a prominent citizen. I was called before the committee first, and having been through the mill before, I managed to satisfy the committee that I was qualified to wear a cavalry uniform and draw full rations. I remember that in canvassing the question of age – or rather what we should say on that subject – we had agreed to state that we were twenty-one. I was not fifteen until the next February. The examiners did not question my age.

“We won’t say twenty-one years,” said Waterman, “and so we won’t lie about it.”

After I had been under fire for some time I was told to step aside, and Waterman was brought before the examiners.

“He looks too young,” said Mr. Robinson to Lieutenant Hopkins.

“Well, question him, suggested the lieutenant.

“How old are you? inquired the committee man.

“Twenty-one, sir,” replied Waterman.

“When were you twenty-one?”

“Last week.”

“I think you’re stretching it a little.”

“No, sir; I’m older than Allen, who has just been taken in.”

“I guess not; you may go out in the other room by the stove and think it over.”

Our married man Taylor was next called in.

“We can’t take you,” said Robinson.

“What’s matter?” exclaimed Giles.

“You’re not old enough.”

“How old’ve I got to be?”

“Twenty-one, unless you get the consent of your parents.”

“Taylor’s a married man,” I whispered to Lieutenant Hopkins.

“Don’t tell that, or he’ll be asked to get the consent of his wife,” said the lieutenant, also in a whisper.

The committee contended that Taylor would not fill the bill. Waterman was recalled, and Mr. Robinson said:

“Well, you’ve had time to think it over. Now how old are you?”

“Twenty-one, last week.”

“I can’t hardly swallow that.”

“See here, Mr. Quinn” (I had not heard the committee man’s other name then), I interrupted. “We three have come together to enlist. You have said that I can go. Taylor may be a trifle under age, but what of it? If you don’t take the three of us none of us will go.”

There was more talk of the same kind, but finally the war committee decided to send us on to Pittsfield and let the recruiting authorities of that place settle the question of Taylor and Waterman’s eligibility.

There was no trouble at Pittsfield, and we were forwarded to Boston in company with several other recruits. The rendezvous was at Camp Meigs in Readville, ten miles or so below the city. Arriving at the camp we were marched to the barracks of Company I, Third Battalion, First Massachusetts cavalry, to which company we had been assigned.

When we entered the barracks we were greeted with cries of “fresh fish,” etc., by the “old soldiers,” some of whom had reached camp only a few days before our arrival. We accepted the situation, and were ready as soon as we had drawn our uniforms to join in similar greetings to later arrivals. The barracks were one-story board buildings. They would shed rain, but the wind made itself at home inside the structures when there was a storm, so there was plenty of ventilation. The bunks were double-deckers, arranged for two soldiers in each berth.