Sketches from Concord and Appledore | Page 8

senators and representatives united

against him in a massive phalanx. Even the friendship of General Grant
was unable to protect him from the fury of his opponents. He returned,
not unwillingly, to his native heath and the practice of a better
profession than Washington politics.
In his report to Congress on the battle of Bull Run, General Winfield
Scott gave the opinion that it was lost through the lack of capable
officers for the volunteer regiments; and it is generally true that men
who like to play soldier in time of peace are not the best material to
make real soldiers out of. This would not apply however to Captain
George L. Prescott of Concord, who commanded the embattled farmers
in that engagement. He was leading an advance on the enemy's
centre--"a magnificent sight to look at," his colonel said--when the right
wing of the army was outflanked by General Kirby Smith, and the
Union forces obliged to retreat. The colonel also appears to have done
his duty there, and being severely wounded at this juncture could hear
nothing in the feverish condition he was in for the next few days but
Prescott saying, "Steady, men, steady!" to the soldiers. Previous to
1861 he was station master at Concord, and also carried on a business
in lumber, cement, and other building materials, which he could easily
do, for trains in those days were not so very numerous. He was the first
person that attracted the attention of visitors to the town; for he had a
commanding figure and a frank, manly countenance, only too fearless
and kindly,--a very handsome man. The Hoar family were evidently
Yankees, and so were Emerson, Alcott, and Sanborn, but Captain
Prescott was an American without seeming to belong to any particular
part of the country. His cordial frankness and independence of manner
reminded one of a Virginian.
The refined side of his nature is indicated by an anecdote of his first
few days in camp on the Potomac. A cadet freshly graduated from West
Point was directed by General McDowell to drill the different
companies of the regiment in succession, and having but slight respect
for volunteer soldiers, he gave an emphasis to his orders by the
plentiful use of profane language. When he came to the Concord
company, Captain Prescott, who was standing at one side, walked
across to him and said, "I must request you, Sir, to give your orders in
the plain terms of the military code, for my men do not like profanity.
If you do otherwise, I shall order them to march off the ground; and

they will obey me and not you." This brought the cadet to terms very
quickly.
In the spring of 1862 he recruited another company for the
Massachusetts Thirty-second; soon rose to the rank of colonel; and
after escaping the peril of a dozen hard-fought battles, he was finally
killed, with nearly half his command, in Grant's advance upon
Richmond. Perhaps no other man would have been so greatly missed in
his native town.
Thoreau used to walk through Concord with the long step of an Indian,
looking straight before him, but at the same time observing everything.
Occasionally he would stop, make an incision in the bark of a tree with
his knife, or pick up a stone and examine it. It was not often that he was
met with in anybody's house, or seen in company with other men.
His profession was that of a surveyor; and it is easy to imagine how,
with his poetic temperament, while laying out roads and measuring
wood-lots, he came to be what he was. Many people thought his
peculiar ways were an affectation, but I believe that he was one of the
plainest and simplest of men; as plain and single-minded as President
Lincoln himself. It was his theory of the way men should live. He was a
Diogenes without being a cynic.
James Russell Lowell (as he himself tells us) was sent to Concord to
rusticate while he was at college, and conceived at that time an aversion
for Thoreau which never left him. In his celebrated "Fable for Critics"
he satirized him as an imitator of Emerson, and so plainly that there
was no mistaking the portrait. This could not have troubled Thoreau
much for he was a perfect stoic, and cared little for the opinions of
others so long as he satisfied his own conscience. Emerson, however,
felt it keenly, for it was equally a reflection on his friend and his own
sagacity. In his last volume of poems Lowell also speaks of Emerson in
a way which indicates rather a diminished respect for him.
It is true that Thoreau imitated Emerson's manner of speech a good
deal--and it was often difficult to avoid doing