Theodore Parker died in Florence, on May 10th. Sanborn contributed the $50 dollars it would take to transport an already prepared monument for Parker from Rome to Florence, and to set it up. Having been named Parker's literary executor, expecting to receive the bounty of Parker's sea of manuscripts, Sanborn reeled when Mrs. Parker told him he would get her husband's papers only over her dead body.

On May 23rd Anna Alcott married John Bridge Pratt, the son of former Brook Farmer Minot Pratt. The marriage was performed by her mother's father, Samuel Joseph May, who was assisted by Ephraim Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape. The Alcott and Minot families were all present, as were Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson and their family, Henry Thoreau, Frank Sanborn and his sister Sarah, their couin Louisa Leavitt, and Marry Mann.

Soon, in June, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family would be returning from their long sojourn in Europe. Mary Mann, sister of Sophia Hawthorne and Elizabeth Peabody, had been living in their home. The widow of the great educator Horace Mann had moved to Concord to live with her three sons in the Wayside house on Lexington Road. She’d been glad of having the roof over their heads -- and of the surrounding forty-two acres of woods. Her sons had all studied under Sanborn, who’d frequently come calling on their mother. People said she saw in the tall, fervent, romantic young reformer, whose hair now fell in a cascade to his shoulders, a man that much reminded her of her elegant and passionate lost husband.

Sanborn was happy to learn Mary was thinking to make Concord her permanent home. As he only took boys and girls in the higher grades, there seemed a need in the town for a school for smaller children. He agreed with her, that a lower school could succeed. He helped her make plans. She fell in love with a fine white Colonial house for sale, right next to where he lived, and just across the street from Sanborn's school, which she purchased. She could now rejoice, with all Concord, in the imminent return of her sister Sophia, her husband Nathaniel, and their children Una, sixteen, Julian, fourteen, and nine-year-old Rose.

My first sight of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sanborn wrote, was at the summer evening party given to him and his wife in June 1860 upon their return to their Wayside home. Many of his friends had, in the meantime, become my friends. I had lived familiarly in the house of Ellery Channing, called on there often by Thoreau, had walked many miles with them and with Emerson. George William Curtis, who had been a neighbor when the Hawthornes had lived in the Old Manse, since had also become my friend, through his intimacy with my brother-in-law, George Walker. Consequently, I had learned much from them about this man of genius long before I made his actual acquaintance. Actually, it was easier to fathom his character through hearsay among others than by associating with him firsthand. He was Concord's most shy, elusive citizen, one scarcely recognizing any social duties, living in the company of his imaginary creations and his admiring family.

We are all blooming, Louisa May Alcott wrote in July, just now full of the Hawthornes whose arrival gives us new neighbors and something to talk about besides Parker, Sumner, and Sanborn

That summer, Sanborn wrote, my friend Edwin Morton returned from Switzerland, and commenced the study of law, in Plymouth. Gerrit Smith had, by then, been discharged from the Utica Insane Asylum, maintaining admiration for John Brown even as he professed his having been ignorant of Brown's plans.

Mr. Hawthorne is as queer as ever, Louisa May Alcott wrote. We catch glimpses of a dark mysterious looking man in a big hat and red slippers darting over the hills or skimming by as if he expected the house of Alcott were about to rush out and clutch him. Mrs. Hawthorne is as sentimental and muffing as of old, wears crimson silk jackets, a rosary from Jerusalem, fireflies in her hair, and dirty white shirts with the sacred mud of London still extant thereon. Una is a stout English looking 16-yearold with the most ardent hair and eyebrows, Monte Bene airs and graces and no accomplishments but riding which was put to an end to this morning by a somersault from her horse in the grand square of this vast town. She was not hurt but her Byronic Papa forbade her to distinguish herself in any such manner again, and she is in a high state of wrath and woe. Julian is a worthy boy full of pictures, fishing rods and fun, and Rose is a little bud of a child with scarlet hair.

Mary Mann's very shrewd business advisor, Mr. Downer of Boston, had handled Mr. Mann's many investments very well down through the years. He approved her buying the elegant white Colonial house at Number 7, Sudbury Road, Concord. Her sister Elizabeth came at once. Lizzie was now fifty-six, and was given to occasional melancholy, feeling she had not become the person she was intended to be. At last, she now felt, she might do something satisfactory for herself and her family and friends, the likes of which had not been done before.

Concord's new school was an immediate success. It is the closest thing to a Kindergarten that New England can offer, Elizabeth said. Beyond the obvious influence of German educational theory over the operation of the school, there was, in equal measure, what could only be called the Alcottian. There were nature talks with Mr. Thoreau,who, through his teaching the names of birds and flowers, would impart in the children a lifelong appreciation of nature. The children were taught to sing, and to play games, and to work with their hands.

Here were the three Peabody sisters, together in Massachusetts for the first time in seven years, all living in Concord. There would be joyful reunions at Mary Mann's new white house near the center of town, where Elizabeth had come to join her sister in starting up her new school. To Sophia's mind, Elizabeth and Mary were too plain open and outspoken regarding their views on slavery, worrying that Elizabeth would tell delicate Una, who had come very close to dying in a fever when the Hawthorne's had lived in Rome, her horrible stories about slavery, which she felt her daughter had a right to be exempt from hearing.

Sanborn suggested Mary write a life of her husband. She balked, insisting she was unequal to the task, but Sanborn said he'd help her. Lizzie promptly went to Boston to the offices of Walker, Fuller and Company, to get signatures on an agreement making them Mary's publishers.

Thoreau, having been invited to speak at a memorial for John Brown on the 4th of July, had declined, but now submitted for publication in The Liberator what would become known as The Last Days of John Brown, culled from his late 1859 Journal entries.

A biography of the Republican presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, now saw publication, written by one William Dean Howells, 23. With the proceeds from his book, Howells would undertake a literary pilgrimmage to New England, meeting Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Lowell, and Holmes. In 1900 Howells would publish the narrative, Literary Friends and Acquaintances.

I found the courage, Howells would write, to go and present to Nathaniel Hawthorne a letter of introduction from James Russell Lowell. I would almost have foregone meeting the weird genius only to have kept that letter. Years later, after Hawthorne was dead, I would meet Mrs. Hawthorne and tell her of the pang I'd had in parting with that letter, and she would send it to me. That summer day, in 1860, I carried the treasured letter in my hand to the door of the cottage called The Wayside. The door was opened to my ring by a tall handsome boy whom I supposed to be Julian Hawthorne. The next moment I found myself in the presence of the Great Romancer himself.

Mr. Hawthorne asked me if I would not like to go up on his hill with him, Howells remembered, to sit with him there. He offered me a cigar. When I said I did not smoke, he lighted it for himself, and we climbed the hill together. At the top we found a log. He invited me to a place on the log beside him. At intervals of a minute or so, he talked while he smoked. He questioned me as to my knowledge of Concord, and whether I had seen any of the notable people. I answered that I had met no one but himself, as yet, but I very much wished to see Emerson and Thoreau. When he asked whether I was not going to see his neighbor, Mr. Alcott, I confessed that I had never heard of him. That surprised as well as pleased him. He remarked there was nothing like recognition to make a man modest. He then entered into an account of the philosopher, whose influence seemed to be of that kind which makes a man important to his townsmen while he is still strange to his countrymen. Back at his house, after tea, Hawthorne asked me how long I was to be in Concord, offering to give me a card to Emerson, if I liked. He wrote: I find this young man worthy.

The next morning I went to find Thoreau, Howells reported. He came into the room a quaint, stump figure of a man, whose effect of long trunk and short limbs was heightened by his fashionless trousers being let down too low. He had a noble face, with tossed hair, a distraught eye, and a fine aquilinity of profile. His nose failed to add that foot to his stature which Lamb said a nose of that shape gives a man. He offered me a chair not quite so far off as Ohio, though still across the room. He sat against one wall, and I against the other. I made attempts to say something fit about John Brown, and Walden Pond, but it seemed only to deepen his reverie. I marvel that, after this encounter with Thoreau, I had the courage to present to Emerson the card Hawthorne had given me.

I remember the fine old man standing at his front door with the card in his hand, Howells wrote. He looked from it to me, then from me back to the card, most serenely. We sat awhile in his study, then he asked me to join him for dinner. When questioned as to who else in Concord I'd met, besides Hawthorne, I said, Thoreau. He asked me if I knew the poems of Mr. Channing. I answered that I knew them only from Poe's cruel and spiteful criticisms.

Whose criticisms? Emerson asked.

Poe's.

Oh! Emerson cried out after a moment. The jingle-man!

Sanborn was then busy editing Channing’s poems, meanwhile working on a biography of Hawthorne, even as he plotted schemes to get Theodore Parker's papers.

Parker had told me privately that I'd be named his literary executor, Sanborn complained. But his will left the matter to Mrs. Parker. His Journals, ultimately intended for the Boston Public Library, would come into my hands from Mrs. Parker's executors after her death, riddled with erasures but still containing many passages that could not discreetly be submitted to a great library for general inspection.

Mr. Thoreau has come back from Mount Monadnoc! Ellen Emerson reported on August 11th. He has regaled us with his stories, so that we all want to set off directly, taking him for our guide. All tea-time he told the most wonderful tales. I afterwards went out, returning to find Father in full pursuit of something, nobody knew what, perhaps rustling inside the chimney, or behind a closet door, but it couldn't be found. I was sure it was behind the School of Philosophers picture on the mantlepiece, which I lifted, and there was a bat. Mr. Thoreau was immediately anxious to see it, and everybody gathered round him. The bat began to fly in circles and, at last, Mr. Thoreau caught him. The bat grinned and chattered and gnashed his teeth with rage. Thoreau went and got The Report on such creatures, identified him as a hoary bat, and then liberated him. Back in the parlor, Mr. Thoreau proceeded to tell us more about Mount Monadnoc, till we were all on fire to go.

Father is stirring up the schools, Louisa May Alcott wrote of Concord's School Superintendent, with his wild pudding stick.

I think favorably of Sanborn and his School, Bronson Alcott wrote his brother Samuel May in Syracuse, who was then contemplating sending his son to Concord. 'Tis not all one desires but as good as any in these parts, and in important particulars perhaps better than any. He promotes good feelings, gentlemanly manners, and wholesome sports and recreations. I believe he aims to be strict and kind in his discipline and intercourse. I have not often been in his school: my impressions are derived from the part he has taken as School Committee Man, and at our Sunday Evening lectures and Teacher's Meetings. He is much liked by parents, and pupils. I have reason to think his teaching to be scholarly and thorough. Mr. Emerson and Judge Hoar speak well of his literary acquirements, and have children under his care. I think you need not hesitate about committing George E. to him. Indeed, I know of no School about which I could safely say as much in its praise.

In New York City, Henry James Senior had requested, and had received, a prospectus for Sanborn's school. Admitting his sons Wilkinson and Roberston -- Wilkie and Bob -- were not exceptionally studious, he felt obliged to place them in a school of some kind, to serve as a shelter. His wife thought Concord, Massachusetts was a little further away than she liked, and Mr. James wanted to know the particulars and peculiarities of Sanborn's methods in instructing his less talented pupils. He didn't want Bob and Wilkie in too rigid a curriculum, or disciplinary system, but neither did he think they should get any lazier or dull than they then already seemed to him.

Mary and I traveled forth last Wednesday, James wrote after deciding on the Concord school, bearing Wilky and Bob in our arms to surrender them to the famous Mr. Sanborn.

Out into the field beside his house, James wrote, Sanborn incontinently took us to show how his girls and boys perform together their worship of Hygeia. It was a glimpse into that new world wherein dwelleth righteousness and which is full surely fast coming upon our children and our children's children. I could hardly keep myself, as I saw my children's eyes drink in the mingled work and play of the inspiring scene, from shouting out a joyful Nunc Dimittis. I kissed her one of John Brown's daughters between the eyes, and heard the martyred Johannes chuckle over the fat inheritance of love and tenderness he had after all bequeathed to his children in all good men's minds.

My main concern, the eloquent and stately Mr. James wrote, was Miss Waterman, a teacher at the school having round tender eyes, a young, fair, and robust woman. In her I could see only new danger for my sons, and no promise of safety. I asked her politely to please put out any too lively spark she might kindle in my boys Wilkie and Bob. My present conviction is that a general conflagration is inevitable, ending in total combustion.

In the fall, Sanborn wrote, Nathaniel Hawthorne placed his son Julian, to be fitted for Harvard, in my school, where were already the sons of Emerson, Judge Hoar, Horace Mann, that nephew of Colonel Higginson who would become Admiral Higginson, and now the brothers William James and Henry James, Jr. The poet Channing had recommended my school to him in a letter which describes fairly well the good influence the school had on all who attended it, first as it was in Concord, and second because it was favored by Concordians.

No words that I could use on this occasion would do justice to Sanborn's happy influence on those confided to him, Channing wrote Hawthorne on September 3rd, at the School for boys and girls under his charge, especially the girls. He has supplied a want long felt here. In this country, to every one who purposes to take the least part in any social affairs, the value of a good school is unquestioned. Our schooldays are the best days of our lives. It is when we learn all we ever know. I think nothing would give you so much satisfaction as to have such nice girls as yours directly under his charge. Nothing seems to me more unfortunate, in this land of activity, than to bring up children in seclusion, without the invaluable discipline that a good school presents.

Sophia Hawthorne, Sanborn wrote, in the meantime had decided she could not be persuaded to send her two daughters to a co-educational school, though she would allow her graceful Una to attend our school dances, parties, and woodland walks.

It then fell to me, Sanborn noted, to be party to nominating John Andrew, who had been part of my legal counsel in the kidnapping fracas, for Governor of Massachusetts, at the Worcester Convention, to which I was sent as a Concord delegate. We elected him, and he would be re-elected. Within three years Andrews would be appointing me to a newly created, and important office, Secretary of the Board of State Charities.

On November 6th, Abraham Lincoln was elected President.

Emerson's book, The Conduct of Life, was published by Ticknor and Fields. One critic objected to the book's utter shallowness and flippancy of judgment concerning Christianity.

I have delayed replying to your invitation, Bronson Alcott wrote to James Redpath on November 19th, to attend a Convention called by yourself and friends to meet at Boston on the 3rd of December, for the purpose of discussing the Evils of slavery and the right methods of abolishing it from our Republic as I was not sure of having anything to propose adequate to the subject, company, and occasion. Nor has it been my habit, of late years, to speak at public meetings. But From what Sanborn tells me, as well as from my hope in yourself, will incline me to attend your conference. I cannot now promise to speak. But I hope to enjoy the privilege of listening. It is good to know that young men are disposed to undertake something and to give the prehearing to all sides at the outset. Certainly 'tis time this courtesy and hospitality were given to the views of earnest and humane minds, since good must come of it, alike to freemen and slaves.

The day of the conference in Boston, Thoreau wrote to Alcott, saying he thought Emerson's new book was too moderate. He said he hoped his friend would again find the fire of his earlier books. That day Thoreau went out on a walk, counting growth rings on tree stumps. He caught a cold that developed into what was thought to be bronchitis but which was, in fact, tuberculosis.

Mary Mann's school prospered, despite the absence of her sister Lizzie, who was now spending the greatest part of her time in Boston, where she now started a Kindergarten along the lines of Mary's. Kindergartens, Elizabeth Peabody was telling America at the end of that year, are all the rage.

In December, 1860, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Channing, Emerson, Alcott, and Sanborn joined to form the Concord Club, later called the Fortnightly Club.

On December 20th, South Carolina seceded from the United States. Between January and May, 1861, one after the other, the Southern states would all secede.