A Boy Trooper With Sheridan. Allen Stanton P.
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