Mr. Sanborn's cousin Louisa has lately come to Concord, wrote Ellen Emerson, nineteen, to her sister Edith, seventeen, away at Miss Whiting's School for Young Ladies in Charlestown. She is very kind. You will like her. At School today I was very eager to deliver a recitation when, presently, Mr. Sanborn went round to his desk and dismissed the school. So I didn't speak. It was too bad, she objected. I really had such a beautiful piece, and there was such a beautiful audience. Father and Mother went to an evening lecture, Ellen reported, after which they were joined in our parlor by the lecturer -- Mr. Sanborn.

Sanborn left Concord on February 22, 1858, George Washington's birthday, to travel to Peterboro, New York, to visit Gerrit Smith in his villa. Their common friend, Captain John Brown of Kansas, was there already. Smith had notified Sanborn that Brown had some specifics regarding his plans which he apparently wished to share. Sanborn arrived in Peterboro in the evening. After dinner, Smith’s house guest and tutor to his children, Sanborn’s close friend Edwin Morton, sang in the drawing-room. My musical friend Morton, who came from a long line of violinists, performed Schubert's Serenade. I heard Old Brown singing softly with him, tears in his eyes. After an hour or so in the parlor, I went up with Smith, Brown, and Morton to Morton's room on the third story. In the long winter evening that followed, we sat before Morton's fireplace and listened as Brown unfolded his plans for a campaign somewhere in slave territory east of the Alleghanies.

Now John Brown began to read from his Provisional Constitution, which he’d written up during his stay with Frederick Douglass in Rochester. The whole outline of Brown's campaign in Virginia was laid bare before our little council, Sanborn reported, to the astonishment and almost dismay of those present. Not every detail of Brown's plans was then, or afterward, explained by Brown to Morton, Smith or to me, Sanborn said. But we talked on the subject of his mission, or heard John Brown talk on it, for at least six hours, and probably for more than ten hours. Brown's was an amazing proposition, however desperate in its character and inadequate in its provision of means. Such as it was, he had set his heart on this course as the shortest way to restore our slave-cursed republic to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Brown told us he was ready to die in its execution. Mr. Smith, sixty-one, and myself, twenty-six, did deliberately and earnestly engage with each other that we would stand by, and support, John Brown in his undertaking.

Certainly the cause is enough to live for, if not to die for, Brown later wrote to Sanborn. I have had this one opportunity in a life of nearly sixty years, and could I be continued ten times as long again I might not again have another equal opportunity. God has honored but comparatively a small part of mankind with any possible chance for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards. But, my dear friend, if you should make up your mind to do so I trust it will be wholly from the promptings of your own spirit, after having thoroughly counted the cost. I would flatter no man into such a measure, if I could do it ever so easily. I expect nothing but to endure hardness, Brown revealed. I felt for a number of years, in earlier life, a steady, strong desire to die. But since I saw my prospect of becoming a reaper in the great harvest, I have not only felt quite willing to live but have enjoyed life much, and am now anxious to live for a few years more.

In March Sanborn again joined his five co-conspirators and John Brown, at the American House in Boston. At that point, only two members of this Committee of Six -- the so-called Secret Six -- had pledged their total commitment to Captain Brown's cause. Now Sanborn and Gerrit Smith felt compelled to persuade their colleagues Higginson, Parker, Howe, and Stearns not only to throw in their lot with Brown, but to be his advisers, raising a thousand dollars on the spot from among themselves in support of Brown's Experiment.

Afterwards, Brown dashed off a note to Sanborn -- had he not heard the call to join Brown as a soldier in the war?

Through months of doubt and anxiety, Sanborn pondered it. I listened for a clear and certain call.

Everything was set. The six now knew what Brown was up to, and they in it with him, to the hilt. Brown moved ahead. He again went to see Frederick Douglass in Rochester, asking if he had not heard the call to join Brown as a soldier in the war. Brown then returned to Boston and environs, then turned north to Canada, where there were thousands of blacks, entire communities of them. In order to stir up publicity and sign on new recruits, Brown suddenly put together a convention in Chatham, Canada, May 8th to the 10th, attended by himself, eleven of his soldiers, and all of thirty-four local blacks.

On March 24th, Beth Alcott died. Her sister Louisa May wrote, She died at three this morning, after two years of patient pain. What she'd suffered was seen in the face. At twenty-three she looked like a woman of forty, so worn was she, all her pretty hair gone. Dr. Huntington read the Chapel service, Louisa said of the funeral, and we sang her favorite hymn. Mr. Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Sanborn, and John Pratt carried her out of the old home to the new one at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, chosen by herself. So the first break comes, and I know what death means. A liberator for her, a teacher for us.

With the Hawthornes still overseas in England, the Alcott family lived temporarily in the Hawthorne house, which was called Wayside, but which had been called Hillside by the Alcotts when they had lived there in earlier years. Now they were back in the house, while repairs were being made to their new home, which they called Orchard House, which they'd the previous fall. In July the Alcott family would return to the newly renovated Orchard House, which Louisa would call Apple Slump, where Sanborn would be a regular visitor, reading German with Anna. Louisa would entertain numerous of Sanborn's pupils at the house all that summer, despite her parents' encouraging a union between herself and the schoolmaster which, Louisa knew, would never be.

Bronson Alcott now joined Thoreau in a visit to Marston Watson's house and gardens in Plymouth. After graduating from Harvard in 1839, Watson had taken to gardening and tree-planting on a hillside in his native town, Sanborn reported. There he had built his country estate, Hillside, where Alcott and Thoreau spent some days together.

What a prospect you get every morning from the hill-top east of your house! Thoreau exclaimed in a note to Watson upon his return to Concord. I think that even the heathen that I am, I could say, or sing, or dance morning prayers there of some kind.

In April, Ellery Channing, again unencumbered of the nuisance of a growing family, returned to Concord to reclaim his house for his own. This necessitated Sanborn's renting a house on Main Street from Charles Wetherbee, in which he would live with his sister Sarah, their cousin Louisa Leavitt, and a housekeeper, Julia Leary. Wetherbee had skill in serving dinners, and we dined, four or five of us, with some luxury, Sanborn wrote. My friend and former classmate, Morton, sang some college songs, inducing Thoreau to hum along. Then Thoreau came forward, singing Tom Bowling, the only time I ever heard Thoreau sing. Morton, a good musician, joked there seemed to be some defect, but he could not discern, he said, whether it was in Thoreau's voice, or in the tune.

In May, Morton’s rich New York employer, Gerrit Smith, traveled to Boston to meet with Howe, Parker, Stearns, Higginson, and Sanborn -- together they comprised what Sanborn dubbed The Secret Committee of Six. As Higginson couldn’t make it, only five of the six were present on May 24th in Smith's room at the Revere House. There, faced with Brown’s stated intention of blowing the slavery question wide open and Hugh Forbes’ threatening to expose the entire scheme to the world, the five argued over what they should do next.

Abraham Lincoln, candidate for Illinois Senator, was meanwhile worrying himself sick over the reception of his planned acceptance speech before the Republican Convention in June, in which he'd find the nation at a crossroads -- a house divided. Lincoln, not entirely convinced this was the best possible address to be making to the country at the time, had read his speech to ten or twenty Republican friends the night before. He'd gone too far, his closest associates warned him. Such an oration would throw the Republican party straight into the waiting arms of radicals, they said. Lincoln turned to his trusted, longtime associate, William Herndon. You, Billy, he asked, What do you think?

By God, Herndon responded. Deliver it just as it reads. The speech is true, and wise, and politic. It will succeed, now and in the future. Lincoln assured Herndon he would give the speech as written.

John Brown traveled incognito that summer, assuming the name Shubel Morgan, writing his Articles of Agreement or Christian Virtues Codified as Rules, in which his soldiers were dubbed an Army of Covenanters.

A gentlemanly and respectful deportment shall at all times and places be maintained toward all persons, Brown demanded of his men. All profane or indecent language shall be avoided in all cases. No intoxicating beverages shall be drunk or suffered in camp. All captured property shall be equitably distributed.

I have great faith in the wisdom, integrity, and bravery of Captain Brown, Gerrit Smith reassured Sanborn. For several years I have frequently given him money toward sustaining him in his contests with the slave-power. Whenever he embarks on yet another of these contests, I will again stand ready to help him.

But, Sanborn noted, none of the six persons on our secret committee wants Brown to tell us his plans in detail, we being willing to trust him with our money, wishing for no report of progress save by action. In spite of this understanding, I could not avoid some knowledge of the movements and plans of Brown, since I was the chief medium of his correspondence, when he was not in personal communication with some of us by visits. His forcible emancipation of a dozen slaves in western Missouri, in December, 1858, and their safe removal to Windsor, in Canada, was well known, and caused a price of $3,000 to be set on his head.

With all that swarming in the big world, still Sanborn somehow found the time to appoint an Amusements Committee for his Concord school, as Ellen Emerson reported in her diary. She wrote of her brother Eddy's attending, in December, a party at Sanborn's school-house. She told of her father's dining with Thomas Cholmondeley and Henry Thoreau. That evening, Ellen wrote, Father asked me to get ready for a walk. We started out. It was raining. The snow was five or six inches deep, with a very hard crust, which yet did not bear our weight. We sank at every step. We turned into the unbroken Walden Path, with not a track in it, and then went into the woods. When we came home we had a fire in the parlor. At about 5 o'clock, Mr. Cholmondeley came for tea, and he and Father talked of the Celts and the Germans, of England and Ireland, of America and Italy. Then in came Mr. Sanborn and his cousin Miss Leavitt. The conversation was delightful.

On another evening, Ellen reported, Bronson Alcott showed up to talk with Father about Ideals. Mr. Alcott made a speech I could not understand. I said to Mr. Alcott that I did not understand him when he spoke of Ideals. He asked me whether I had ever dreamed of teaching. I said I would not make a good teacher. He said he doubted there were any good teachers anyway. I said I thought such a thing was possible. As I turned to leave the room, he called after me: That is Idealism!

Every Friday night we visit Mr. Sanborn in the school-room, Ellen wrote. He or one of his friends gives us a lecture, an hour long, and the rest of the evening we amuse ourselves. Every month a committee of five scholars, 3 girls and 2 boys, is appointed, to arrange the proceedings. Sometimes we have a play, sometimes charades, sometimes tableaux, sometimes a dance. Except for four or five other persons Mr. Sanborn may choose to invite, no one is present except students, former students, and our teachers.

Last night I had a dreadful dream, Ellen wrote her sister Edith in February. I dreamed Mr. Sanborn returned my compositon, under which he had written: It will barely pass.

Last night Mr. Thoreau lectured a grand lecture on Autumnal Hints, Ellen wrote her sister Edith on March 3rd. Father, Mother, Mr. Sanborn, and Eddy were all equally delighted. It was funny and Father said there were constant spontaneous bursts of laughter, and Mr. Thoreau was applauded. To-night we are going to have all the teachers to tea, Mr. and Mrs. Wall, Mr. Lyman, and Mr. and Miss Sanborn and his cousin, Miss Louisa Leavitt.

Our house is an excellent one for a party, Ellen wrote Edith on March 5th, which I learned this last Friday night. Instead of meeting at the School, the assorted teachers and scholars came here. The kitchen is a delightful dancing place. The floor is perfect for it: hard-pine, level, actually shining. Eddy invited me to dance with him, then Miss Leavitt asked me to dance with her. There were both fiddle and piano, played loud and well. Afterwards we had cake and lemonade. Mr. Sanborn dropped his plate and broke it, to the delight of everybody. He was quite pathetic about the cake he had lost.

You need flexible, attractive and happy persons about you, Ellery Channing warned the sensitive schoolteacher and overzealous abolitionist, not cold, selfish, icy people who if they were in Nova Zembla would only be throwing a lower depression into the thermometers. I like very much the appearance of your cousin Louisa. I hear from those in the know that the young people are quite taken with her. Unmarried women can be so odious.

Mr. Sanborn has more than bested me for my having jested about his spilled cake last Friday night, Ellen wrote a friend on March 14th. He has gone and put me on the Committe for Amusing the School every Friday evening, through the end of March. Imagine, me, all gravity and solemnity, selected to amuse the scholars! Certainly Mr. Sanborn appointed me partly out of malice, but also out of curiosity, to see what such a stiff creature as me would do on being commanded to become active, and antic. He said: I wish particularly that Miss Emerson should be on this committee.

Father and Mother had an argument at dinner beyond my comprehension, Ellen wrote Edith in mid-March. Father felt disposed to talk in riddles about Theodore Parker.

On Saturday, May 7th, a little after noontime, Sanborn wrote, John Brown appeared at my door accompanied by a faithful henchman, Jeremiah Anderson, of Iowa. We proceeded to give notice, through the churches on Sunday morning, of a meeting that evening, at which Brown would speak.

This evening I heard Captain Brown speak at the Town Hall, wrote Concord's newly appointed Superintendent of Schools, Amos Bronson Alcott, afterwards. He spoke on Kansas affairs, and the part taken by him in the troubles there. He told his story with surpassing simplicity and sense. Nature obviously was deeply interested in the making of him, Alcott wrote in admiration. He is of imposing appearance, personally. He is tall, with square shoulders and standing, eyes of deep gray, and couchant, as if ready to spring at the least rustling, dauntless yet kindly. His hair shoots backward from low down on his forehead, his nose trenchant and Romanesque. He has set lips, his voice is suppressed yet metallic, suggesting deep reserves. His countenance and frame are charged with power throughout. Since here last he has added a flowing beard, which gives the soldierly air and the port of an apostle. Though sixty years old, he is agile and alert, and ready for any audacity, any crisis.

It was from this last visit to the Boston area in 1859, Sanborn noted, that John Brown set out towards Virginia, and Harpers Ferry.

The last day of the schoolyear, in late July, was observed at Sanborn’s academy with a picnic. Our school is broken up and gone, Ellen wrote. We enjoyed dancing and all sorts of splendor in the evening. Mr. Sanborn wrote a lovely song; one of the scholars wrote another; then two others, one sung to the tune of Fair Harvard. All were sung at the picnic and the dance. We were all very joyful and proud of Mr. Sanborn and each other, but melancholy the next day, realizing the schoolyear really was done. Then the next days were full of anxiety, our boys being examined to enter college, coming back for one last day to tell us how they got in, rejoicing with us. This was so exciting and delightful. Then they went, and we settled back into thoroughly domestic life, for the first time in a long while.

Summer eased into September, a new schoolyear, and a bold and brilliant golden autumn. News of John Brown's foray came in mid-October.