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:
“At Pittsburg Landing
Our troops fought very hard;
They killed old Johnston
And conquered Beauregard.”
Chorus: “Hoist up the flag;
Long may it wave
Over the Union boys,
So noble and so brave.”
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.