THEY DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY
IN THE WAR OF THE REBELLION
with the forty-four names.
Hon. John S. Keyes as President of the Day opened the ceremonies with a
short address. The Rev. Grindall Reynolds made the prayer. An Ode written
by Mr. George B. Bartlett was sung to the tune of _Auld Lang Syne_. Hon.
Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, the Chairman of the Monument Committee, read the
Report, in itself an eloquent and moving speech. This was followed by Mr.
Emerson’s Address. Mr. F. B. Sanborn contributed a Poem, and afterwards
short speeches were made by Senator George S. Boutwell, William Schouler,
the efficient Adjutant-General of the State, and by Colonels Parker and
Marsh respectively of the Thirty-second and Forty-seventh regiments of
Massachusetts Volunteers, in which the Concord companies had served. The
exercises were concluded by the reading of a poem by Mr. Sampson Mason,
an aged citizen of the town.
It was a beautiful spring day. The throng was too large for the town
hall, so, partly sheltered from the afternoon sun by the town elm,
thickening with its brown buds, they gathered around the town-house
steps, which served as platform for the speakers.
[181] _Page 351, note 1._ Compare, in the _Poems_, the lines in “The
Problem” on the adoption by Nature of man’s devotional structures.
[182] _Page 352, note 1._
Great men in the Senate sate,
Sage and hero, side by side,
Building for their sons the State,
Which they shall rule with pride.
They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owners’ fierce disdain,
Lured by “Union” as the bribe.
Destiny sat by, and said,
‘Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
Hide in false peace your coward head,
I bring round the harvest day.’
[183] _Page 353, note 1._ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, No. xiv., in “Poems
dedicated to National Independence,” part ii.
[184] _Page 355, note 1._ Mr. Emerson had in mind the astonishing
fertility of resource in difficulties shown by the Eighth Massachusetts
Regiment in the march from Annapolis to Washington, as told by Major
Theodore Winthrop in “New York Seventh Regiment. Our march to Washington”
(_Atlantic Monthly_ June, 1861). See “Resources,” _Letters and Social
Aims_, p. 143.
Judge Hoar in his report on this occasion said, “Two names [on the
tablet] recall the unutterable horrors of Andersonville, and will never
suffer us to forget that our armies conquered barbarism as well as
treason.”
[185] _Page 356, note 1._ Between 1856 and 1859 John Brown and other
Free-State men, Mr. Whitman, Mr. Nute and Preacher Stewart, had told the
sad story of Kansas to the Concord people and received important aid.
[186] _Page 358, note 1._ This was Captain Charles E. Bowers, a
shoemaker, and Mr. Emerson’s next neighbor, much respected by him, whose
forcible speaking at anti-slavery and Kansas aid meetings he often
praised. When the war came, Mr. Bowers, though father of a large family,
and near the age-limit of service, volunteered as a private in the first
company, went again as an officer in the Thirty-second Massachusetts
Regiment, and served with credit in the Army of the Potomac until
discharged for disability.
[187] _Page 358, note 2._ George L. Prescott, a lumber dealer and
farmer, later Colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment, U. S. V. He was of
the same stock as Colonel William Prescott, the hero of Bunker Hill.
Judge Hoar said of him, “An only son, an only brother, a husband and a
father, with no sufficient provision made for his wife and children, he
had everything to make life dear and desirable, and to require others to
hesitate for him, but he did not hesitate himself.”
[188] _Page 361, note 1._ Blaise de Montluc, a Gascon officer of
remarkable valor, skill and fidelity, under Francis I. and several
succeeding kings of France.
[189] _Page 365, note 1._ It was well said by Judge Hoar: “His
instinctive sympathies taught him from the outset, what many higher in
command were so slow and so late to learn, that it is the first duty of
an officer to take care of his men as much as to lead them. His character
developed new and larger proportions, with new duties and larger
responsibilities.”
[190] _Page 366, note 1._ The Buttricks were among the original settlers
of Concord, and the family has given good account of itself for nearly
two hundred and seventy years, and still owns the farm on the hill
whence Major John led the yeomen of Middlesex down to force the passage
of the North Bridge. Seven representatives of that family of sturdy
democrats volunteered at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion. Two
were discharged as physically unfit, but the others served in army or
navy with credit, and two of them lost their lives in the service. Alden
Buttrick had fought the Border Ruffians in Kansas. Humphrey, a mason by
trade, but a mighty hunter, left his wife and little children at the
first call, and was first sergeant of Prescott’s company. Mr. Emerson
omits to state that he was commissioned lieutenant in the Forty-seventh
Regiment the following year. His service, especially as captain in the
Fifty-ninth Regiment, was arduous and highly creditable.
[191] _Page 368, note 1._ Edward O. Shepard, who had been master of the
Concord High School, afterwards a successful lawyer, had an excellent war
record, and rose to be lieutenant-colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment.
George Lauriat left the gold-beater’s shop of Ephraim W. Bull (the
producer of the Concord Grape) to go to the war in Concord’s first
company. Modest and brave, he became an excellent officer and returned
captain and brevet-major of the Thirty-second Regiment.
[192] _Page 368, note 2._ Francis Buttrick, younger brother of Humphrey,
a handsome and attractive youth, had lived at Mr. Emerson’s home to carry
on the farm for him.
[193] _Page 375, note 1._ These three were Asa, John and Samuel Melvin.
Asa died of wounds received before Petersburg; both his brothers of
sickness, Samuel after long suffering in the prison-pen at Andersonville.
They came of an old family of hunter-farmers in Concord. Close by the
wall next the street of the Old Hill Burying Ground is the stone in
memory of one of their race, whose “Martial Genius early engaged him in
his Country’s cause under command of the valiant Captain Lovel in that
hazardous Enterprise where our hero, his Commander, with many brave and
valiant Men bled and died.”
[194] _Page 379, note 1._ The writer of this letter, a quiet, handsome
school-boy the year before the war broke out, lived just across the
brook behind Mr. Emerson’s house. He was an excellent soldier in the
Thirty-second Regiment, and reënlisted as a veteran in 1864.