He fulfilled most completely in the same moment the double mission of the soldier, to kill and be killed.

Those who do the fighting never do know very much about what they are fighting for,--if they did, most of them would not fight at all.

In these days of common schools and newspapers it becomes ever more and more difficult to recruit armies with men who neither know nor think; the common soldier is beginning to have opinions; by and by he will not fight unless convinced he is right,--then there will be fewer wars.
Over the road we were following the British marched in order and retreated in disorder.

The undisciplined minute-men were not very good at standing up in an open square and awaiting the onslaught of a company of regulars,--it takes regulars to meet regulars out in the open; but behind trees and fences, from breast-works and scattered points of advantage, each minute-man was a whole army in himself, and the regulars had a hard time of it on their retreat, -- the trees and stones which a few hours before had been just trees and stones, became miniature fortresses.
The old vineyard, where in 1855 Ephraim Bull produced the now well known Concord grape by using the native wild grape in a cross with a cultivated variety, is at the outskirts of Concord.
A little farther on is "The Wayside," so named by Hawthorne, who purchased the place from Alcott in 1852, lived there until his appointment as Consul at Liverpool in 1853, and again on his return from England in 1860, until he died in 1864.

But "The Wayside" was not Hawthorne's first Concord home.