A BOY TROOPER WITH SHERIDAN
By Stanton P. Allen
First Massachusetts Cavalry
Boston
Lothrop Publishing Company
1899,
CONTENTS
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.
N the local columns of the Troy (N. Y.) Daily Times of September 1, 1863, the following news:
MORE THAN HE BARGAINED FOR.
“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 w