Duncan Walker practised law with his brother until elevated to the Bench of the criminal court for the city of Natchez and County of Adams. He served with distinguished capacity for only one or two years, when he was prostrated by a severe attack of yellow fever. From this he never entirely recovered. Retiring from the Bench, he directed his attention to planting in Lower Louisiana; but his health continuing to decline, he was induced to try for the winter the climate of Cuba. It was but a few weeks after reaching there that he died at St. Jago de Cuba. Judge Walker was distinguished for great purity of character as well as superior legal attainments. His modesty was almost feminine; yet he was a man of remarkable firmness and decision. By many he was thought superior intellectually to his more distinguished and prominent brother. Few men may be truthfully termed superior to R.J. Walker.
In 1826, there came to Natchez, from Maine, a youth who was a cripple. He was without acquaintances or recommendations, and also without means. He was in search of a school, and expressed his intention of making the South his future home. His appearance was boyish in the extreme, for one who professed to be twenty years of age. At that time most of the planters in the region of Natchez employed private teachers in their families, who resided with the family as one of the household. A lady near Natchez, the widow of Judge Shields, was desirous of employing a teacher, and tendered the situation to the young Yankee. Mrs. Shields had grown-up sons, young men of fine attainments, and who subsequently distinguished themselves as men of sterling worth. They were soon delighted with the young stranger, who was busily employed in his new vocation with their younger brothers. I remember to have heard Mr. Thomas Shields say the young man teaching at his mother's was a most remarkable man, and narrate some instances of his great powers of memory, accompanied with facts which came within his own knowledge. These were so very extraordinary, that notwithstanding the high character for integrity borne by Shields, there were many who doubted them.
There lived at no great distance from Mrs. Shields, a planter, Mr. Thomas Hall. This man was a coarse and illiterate overseer for some years in the county, but having carefully husbanded his earnings, was enabled, in company with James C. Wilkins, to commence planting upon an extensive scale. At the time this young man was teaching at Mrs. Shields', Hall had accumulated quite a fortune, and was a man of comparative leisure. His mind was good, and now that he had an abundance of the world's goods, and was becoming a man of consideration in the community, he felt, in his intercourse with his educated neighbors, the want of that cultivation which would make him their equal. This had made him morbidly sensitive, and whenever an opportunity presented, he improved it in acquiring all the information possible.
On Saturdays the young schoolmaster would frequently ride over and converse with Hall. The strong mind and coarse but cordial manners of Hall pleased him. He was a specimen of the Southerner possessing salient points, and was a study for the Down-Easter. Never before had he met such a specimen, and it was his delight to draw him out, little deeming he was filling the same office for his friend. They were mutually agreeable the one to the other, and their association grew into intimacy. Each to their friends would speak of the other as a remarkable man. Assuredly they were; for neither had ever met such specimens as they presented to each other. They sometimes joined in a squirrel-hunt about the plantation of Hall. The schoolmaster's lameness compelled him to ride, while Hall preferred to walk. After a fatiguing tramp upon one occasion, they sat down upon the banks of Cole's Creek, where Hall listened with great delight to the conversation of his companion. Suddenly Hall started up, and exclaimed, with more than his usual warmth:
"You have taught me more than I ever knew before meeting with you; but I ought not to say what I am going to say. You, sir, were never made for a schoolmaster. By the eternal God!"—Hall was a Jackson man—"you know more than any man in the county, and you have got more sense than any of them, though you are nothing but a boy. Now, sir, go to town and study law with Bob Walker; he's the smartest of any of them. In two years you will be ahead of him. If you haven't got the money to pay your way, I have, and you shall have it."
The term for which he had engaged was now expiring, and, as Hall had requested, he went into the office of Robert J. and Duncan Walker, and commenced the study of law.
This Yankee youth was Sargent S. Prentiss. Prentiss remained in the office of Walker for one year, and was a close student. When admitted to the Bar, he went to Vicksburg and opened an office. At that time Vicksburg was a new place, and presented peculiar inducements to young professional men. The country upon the Yazoo River—and indeed the entire northern portion of the State—had but recently been quit of its Indian population, and was rapidly filling up with an active and enterprising people. The soil was fertile, and the production of cotton, to which it is so eminently suited, was daily growing in importance. Vicksburg was the market-point. Trade was increasing daily, and rapidly filling up the town with mercantile men. The young and enterprising were hurrying thither, and in a few years there was met here more talent and more enterprise than at any other point in the State. The Bar had Prentiss, John Guion, McNutt, Sharkey, the three Yergers, Anderson, Lake, Brook, Burwell, and many others of distinction, including the erratic H.S. Foote.
The entire population was a live one, and every branch of business was pushed with a vim commensurate with the abilities and enterprise of the population. The planters of the immediately adjacent country were men of intelligence and character, and were animated with the spirit of the people of the town, forming on the whole a community of almost reckless enterprise. It was at such a time and in the midst of such a people that young Prentiss had made his selection of a home, and a field for the future exercise of his professional abilities.
Young, ardent, and ambitious, he sought to rival his seniors at the Bar. Unwilling to wait on time, he aspired to leap at once to this equality. It was the daring of genius, and of a genius which counted as only a stimulant the obstacles intervening. To grapple with giants, such as he found in Guion, Yerger, Sharkey, McNutt, and Lake, would have intimidated a less bold and daring mind; but Prentiss courted the conflict con amore, and applying all his herculean powers with the vigor of youth and the ardency of enterprise, he soon found himself quite equal to any competitor.
When an infant, a fever settled in his leg, causing it to wither from the knee to the foot, and doomed him through life to lameness. Like Byron, he was sensitive upon the subject of this physical defect. It was a serious obstacle to his locomotion, and in speaking compelled a sameness of position injurious to the effect of his oratory. Scarcely had two years elapsed from the time of his admission to the Bar before his fame as a lawyer and advocate was filling the State. His business had increased to such an extent as to require his undivided attention, as he was employed in almost every important suit in that section of the State. His qualities of heart were as conspicuous as those of his brain, which had endeared him to the people of Vicksburg perhaps more than any other citizen. This social and professional popularity caused him to be elected to the Legislature of the State. He belonged to the Whig party, which was largely in the minority in the Legislature, but was powerful in talent.