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:
You’d better go round!
You’d better go round!
We’ll bite your bait off!
We’ll bite your bait off!
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:
You’d better go home!
You’d better go home!
They’ll shoot your head off!
They’ll shoot your head off!
And, oh! how that old bull-frog with the bass voice came in on the chorus:
“They’ll shoot your head off!”
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