638 FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 



personal reconnoissance, and had. Ms horse shot under him." He was 

 a model adjutant- general; and to be a model adjutant- general demands 

 high intellectual and literary capacity. General Warren says of him 

 in his report of the cami^giign: "He is fully acquainted with his office 

 duties, so important to the operation of an army corps. He is willing 

 and gallant on the field." 



He was by Hancock's side at Reams Station and received honorable 

 mention in Hancock's report. He rode into the enemy's lines in the 

 darkness and was captured. He made a gallant dash for liberty and 

 swam the Appomattox River, but was taken again by the enemy as, 

 exhausted by the last stroke for which his strength held out, he gained 

 the shore. He was six weeks in Lib by prison. He was made brigadier- 

 general for gallant conduct at Chancellorsville, by Hancock's exi^ress 

 request. * * * 



Walker did not come back from the war spoiled for the duties of civil 

 life. I would not speak unkindly of those to whom that happened. 

 Commonly they could not help it. The cause of it, in many cases, was 

 physical and not moral. A malarial fever or a wound often takes out 

 of a man the courage and steadfastness needed for common business 

 who never would fliuch before the enemy or the hardship of a campaign 

 life. The anxiety, the hope and fear, the constant peril, the din of bat- 

 tle, the thunder of the cannon, and the shouting — I do not see how the 

 sound of shot and shell could ever afterwards get out of their ears — how 

 could they not spoil the boy for the quiet duties of the farm and the 

 shop? It was the sacrifice he made for his country, a sacrifice even 

 more costly than life itself. But to Walker, as to many another good 

 soldier — as to Grant, as to Devens, as to Garfield, as to McKinley — 

 the military training was the very source and inspiration of civic 

 greatness. * * * 



Walker was 24 years old when he came home from the Army, broken 

 down by im]3risonmeut and hardship. It took several years to get back 

 his health. But he set himself to work at once. His purpose was to 

 go to work wherever he could find work to do. His path in life seems 

 to have been determined by opportunity and not by inclination. He 

 was employed as a teacher of Latin and Greek in Williston Seminary 

 for more than three years. From March 15, 1868, to January 15, 1869, 

 he was an assistant editor of the Springfield Republican, and wrote, he 

 says, about two-thirds of the editorial matter. He went from Spring- 

 field to Washington. From that day to his death he led two busy and 

 crowded lives. One was the life of a practical administrator of large 

 aifairs; the other the life of a theorist, an industrious student and 

 thinker in the closet. He administered in succession a variety of 

 important executive offices. He was the author of a great number of 

 books, addresses, and papers on interesting and living questions. * * * 



He taught Latin and Greek at Williston from 1865 to 1868. 

 Assistant editor of the Springfield Republican in 1868. 



Professor of political economy and history in Sheffield Scientific School, at Yale, 

 from 1873 to 1881. 



