Having brought a suit against the men who'd tried to usher me from Concord, Sanborn bragged, I saw them indicted in the Middlesex County Courtroom for the criminal offense of kidnapping. But I halted any further litigation early in 1861, as the Civil War was coming on and some of these men, along with their legal counsel, were going to the front.

In January, antislavery advocates Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and Wendell Phillips had been scheduled to appear together in Boston, at the Tremont Temple, where Elizabeth Peabody had years before helped Bronson Alcott start the legendary Temple School.

Here was Elizabeth now, on the snowy, ice-cold evening of the lectures, out front of the Temple in a huge, chaotic crowd. Insult upon injury, she not only hadn’t been invited to be a speaker, she hadn't even been able to get a ticket to get in. Fights sprang up spontaneously all around her, antislavery advocates grappling with proslavery agitators, everyone pushing and pressing toward the few doorways that led into the great hall.

Suddenly, several young men who'd been standing very near her, circled around her. No sooner did she recognize them as former pupils than she was whisked into the Temple, just as the magnificent orator Wendell Phillips approached the podium. Pandemonium broke loose.

Throw him out! a man yelled. Hit him with a brickbat! cried another.

Elizabeth was hoisted to the stage by other former students, some packing guns. She was whisked, with Clarke, Phillips, and Emerson, from the platform to safety.

Concord’s Selectmen were dead-set against Emerson’s delivering his provocative antislavery views in public when in March, to their dismay, a Festival sprang to life in Sanborn's school.

Pilgrim's Progress was told, the children popping up one after the other with their parts, Louisa May Alcott wrote her sister, Anna Pratt. It ended very prettily with a little girl saying solemnly, And behold, it was all a dweem!

Emerson spoke, and my song was sung, Louisa reported. My song had a verse in it about John Brown, Wendell Philips, and company, and some of the old fogies thought it better left out. But Mr. Emerson said, No, no, that is the best. It must be sung, and not only sung but read. He then read it right out loud, to my great surprise and pride. The narrow-minded of Concord will never dare say a word against it now. When all was done, Sanborn asked people to stay a little longer. People paused, and father was invited to the stage. Looking rather bewildered he went, to be met by a tall, handsome boy who stood looking straight up into the old man's face as he made his little speech and presented him with a fine Pilgrim's Progress, and Herbert's Poems, full of the best illustrations: From the scholars of all the schools as a token of their grateful love and respect. Father was quite overcome. He blushed like a boy, his eyes were full, and hugging his dear books he thanked them all so prettily it was a sight to see, as all the children clapped and shouted at the success of the great secret. It was a lovely occasion, and has stirred up the stupid town immensely.

I am sick of Politicians! Henry Thoreau declared March 4th, the day of Lincoln's inauguration. And I am sick of the state of the country, the State itself, and with statesmen generally.

War has been declared with the South, Louisa wrote in her journal in April. Our Concord company has gone to Washington. A busy time getting them ready, and a sad day seeing them off. At the station the scene was very dramatic, as the brave boys went away perhaps never to come back again. I've often longed to see a war, and now I have my wish. I long to be a man. But as I can't fight, I will content myself with working for those who can. John Brown's daughters came to board, and upset my plans of rest and writing. I put my papers away, and fell to work at housekeeping. I think disappointment must be good for me, I get so much of it.

The town is in a heightened state of topsy-turveyness, she wrote a friend. Everyone is boiling over with excitement. When quiet Concord does get stirred up, it is a sight to behold. All the young men and boys drill with all their might, the women and girls sew and prepare to become nurses, the old folks settle the fate of the Nation in groves of newspapers, and the children make the streets hideous with distracted drums and fifes. We are all robust. Abby will soon be done in school at Syracuse, and is coming back to Concord to become the drawing teacher in Sanborn's school.

In mid-May, Ellen Emerson wrote her sister Edith, rejoicing in the family garden’s flaming with tulips amid hyacinths and daffodills. Edward says the drill club meets every morning at 6 o'clock, she reported, and drills till 7:30. This morning I was woken by Edward's going off to drill. Papa and I breakfasted at seven, when Eddy came home, bright red, having had a peculiarly full and satisfactory drill in the open air without muskets, and another with muskets, in the Armory. He had been chosen Orderly-Sargent, the position he likes best. I went to Mr. Thoreau's to deliver a map. he said he was going to Minnesota tomorrow. Father says it is all a mistake, people saying he is sending him. Thoreau goes at his own expense, taking Horace Mann, Jr. with him.

Henry James, Sr. begrudgingly paid his bill to Sanborn for his sons Bob and Wilkie, who’d attended the school. In a brief note to the schoolmaster, James said his boys, compared by their colleague Julian Hawthorne to two hearty sailors on leave, had been given too much freedom. They had been home to visit him altogether too often. He said it seemed to him that Sanborn had many too many vacations, doubting the schoolmaster's having actually had very many good reasons for taking them. James deemed the school unsatisfactory. He pointed out that the war, which the headmaster had helped stir up, was now raging. He asked Sanborn what he had to say for himself. It is not recorded how Sanborn answered.

Henry James Sr.'s older sons, William, nineteen, and Henry Jr., eighteen, did not enlist. Wilkie, sixteen, and Bob, fifteen, were determined to. Bob said he was going to run away and join the navy. He'd refuse to return to Sanborn's school the next fall, against his father's confusing assertion that he must. Wilkie would be beack the next fall, enlisting, with his father's blessings, in the spring of 1862. Eddy Emerson, seventeen, would be a good friend of Wilkie and Bob James in those years.

One word about Edward, the brusque Henry James Sr. snapped at the boy's father, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He smiles like opening violets but is not near so robust as he ought to be, because he is allowed to study too hard, in order that he may enter college one year rather than another.

Emerson took the criticism in his stride, also shirking off James’ insistence that he go to Europe. Why should I go to Europe? Emerson responded, when America has Concord? Emerson envisioned a Community of Thinkers taking hold in Concord. Thomas Carlyle could be enticed into crossing the Atlantic, he felt sure, to settle in Concord. After all, didn't Emerson know which houses were for sale or rent, and what rates were fair? Perhaps he should become a land agent, he pondered.

Sophia Hawthorne managed to keep thoughts of war from disturbing her peace of mind until, one day, one of the workmen who'd been helping to add onto the Wayside house a tower, to which her husband could retreat in order to get his writing done, went off to fight. The wife of her husband's publisher, Annie Fields, seemed to be the only person in the world who sympathized with her when she said a study for her husband was more important than any bloody Civil War.

On June 25th, Thoreau wrote Sanborn a long letter from atop a great river bluff at Red Wing, Minnesota, a western version of Nawshawtuct or Annursnack, Thoreau wrote, enumerating miscellanous details of traveling by steamboat before telling Sanborn of assorted councils and treaties between Indians and white settlers, and so on. I have seen but one eastern paper for five weeks, Thoreau wrote. Yes, The Tribune. The people of Minnesota have seemed to me more cold, feeling less implicated in this war, than the people of Massachusetts. It is apparent that Massachusetts, for one state at least, is doing much more than her share, in carrying it on. I could tell you more and perhaps more interesting things, Thoreau wrote Sanborn wistfully, if I had time.

Minnesota had, at the time of Thoreau's visit, Sanborn would detail mundanely in 1905, less than two hundred thousand people, and a property valuation of less than forty million dollars. Now it has nearly two million people, and the aggregate exceeds seven hundred million dollars. Minnesota was in a relatively primitive condition, and even its history had not been carefully studied, though its Historical Society, whose scanty publications Thoreau sought and mastered, had existed for some ten years.

Thoreau's health did not improve much during the six weeks he traveled. He returned with Horace Mann Jr. to Concord on July 9th.

The war was going badly, Elizabeth Peabody noted at the time. She made plans to go see Bumbling Abe Lincoln at once, to give him some good, sound advice. When she arrived, the stark, lean, enigmatic man listened courteously. Elizabeth, impressed by his silence, surmised he was up to his task. She returned home, assuring anyone who'd listen that the President was clear in his course.

Dorothea Dix, long an advocate for the insane, had started a nursing service, The Sanitary Commission. She’d made it clear that any beautiful women interested in signing on would face the same challenge and opportunity as any interested ugly ones. It had never occured to Elizabeth that she might be turned away for being too old. The nerve! Dorothea Dix telling her, Lizzie, she was too old to be a nurse!

Elizabeth now turned her mighty engines and resolve to a different task, caring for the growing numbers of homeless negro children at the nation's capitol who, in the confusion of the war, driven from their plantation homes, separated from their fleeing parents as well as from their masters, had arrived in Washington to beg, and starve, and die.

Elizabeth knew people. The Congressman William Francis Channing had been one of her students. He listened to her. She demanded a home for colored orphans. He got the Government to pitch in a Washington estate for the purpose. She returned to Boston to seek out teachers for the school she'd see built next to the orphanage.

Elizabeth noticed there were Fairs for Miss Dix's nursing service and assorted other organizations and causes, at which much money got drummed up. So she went to work, organizing fairs for negro orphans.

Mary Mann promised to help her sister organize as many fairs as it would take to build the school. Men black as well as white make excellent music at the piano at the fairs, she observed. It seems indeed a new order of things. How delightful it is to be no longer ashamed of one's country!

Marching down Broadway on a hot July day, a Massachusetts regiment sang a song to the tune of a Southern camp-meeting hymn, John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave / His soul is marching on, a favorite among Union soldiers. Julia Ward Howe, wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, would later give the tune new words and dub it The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Yesterday was a day of glory for Concord, Ellen Emerson wrote her cousin William on July 29th. The fifth regiment returned to Boston from the War, and at night Company G. came home. A week ago came the dreadful story of defeat, the Mass. 5th not being mentioned. All Concord joined in anxiety lest it should not have done well, for why was it not mentioned? Then came a telegraph from our dear Captain Prescott that his company had returned safe to their Camp, received by their Families with joy, but by the town with some bitterness. What business have they to be safe? The same day the papers published three statements: The Mass. 5th lost in all 25 men; ingloriously threw away their colours; were but a short time under fire but did nobly. All this distracted us, didn't hang together right, and all the town was one family, every one knew every one and all considered what could be true. The next day we learned that the Colonel was wounded but would recover, had behaved admirably till wounded. That it was Maine's 5th that threw away their colours, and that in the Concord Company Charles Bowers and his son William were wounded and five men were missing. Every day now brought better and better stories, and we held our heads straighter every day as we heard how entirely our men had fulfilled our wishes. Hurrah! We once more were ready to receive our men with open arms.

I was planning to write you, Louisa May Alcott apologized to a friend on August 4th, when father injured his back, keeping me busy for a week with housekeeping. Mr. Sanborn said you wanted him to write a prologue to one of our plays, which are scattered far and wide.

Eddie Emerson began his freshman year at Harvard in September; in October his father ordered him home. He seems so feeble when shut up in a college room, Emerson said of his son, thinking to withdraw him for the year.

At Harvard, students dropped out daily, to enlist. Fragile Edward Emerson was eager to be stronger. He spoke with his father about going to California, or working in a Maine lumber camp, settling on a plan to help in surveying lots for Mount Auburn Cemetary, in Cambridge.

Concord is quiet now after two very jolly months, Louisa May Alcott wrote a friend on November 12, 1861. The city folks are gone, the parties are done, the mild weather is over. Frank Sanborn's scholars are studying like bees to make up for lost time. A series of dances at the hall were very jovial. We felt free and easy. Sanborn has no very pleasant new scholars, so we don't see much prospect of fun in that direction, for they are mostly young and there are only about thirty in all. Abby teaches drawing there and gets her class along very successfully. Edward Emerson who went to College all so fine has been sick and still is so delicate and consumptivish, his father has taken him away for a year and he is planning to travel to the West Indies, or Californie, and loaf about, getting strong. He looks like a young ghost now, and his many admirers are in a great state of woe lest the handsome boy should go and die.

I am planning to pass the winter in Boston, Louisa continued, if the Fates will allow, me being tired of two Concord winters. Miss Peabody has opened a Kindergarten Child's Garden, or play and school joined together after the German plan, and it is a great hit. She has more babes than she wants, and her idea is for me to teach on one side of the Common while she does on the other.

Louisa would set out for Boston to assist Miss Peabody in her school at the Warren Street Chapel, the curriculum and method based on the ideas of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, as filtered through Lizzzie Peabody. During this time, Louisa lived in the Boston home of James and Annie Fields.

Thoreau's condition also was deteriorating. On August 15th he wrote his friend Ricketson noting, without complaining, that all his usual pursuits were interrupted by illness. It is easy to talk, Thoreau wrote Ricketson on October 14th, but hard to write. From the worst of all correspondents, Henry D. Thoreau.

Thoreau's Journal stopped.

He grows feebler day by day, Bronson Alcott wrote to Ricketson in January. He is evidently failing and fading from our sight. He gets some sleep, has a pretty good appetite, reads at intervals, takes notes of his readings, and likes to see his friends, conversing however with some difficulty as his voice partakes of his general debility. His work is nearly done for us here, and our woods and fields seem sorrowing.

I was surprised this afternoon by our visitor, Moncure Daniel Conway, Ellen Emerson wrote her father on January 29, 1862. I found him charming. Mother and Mr. Sanborn appeared and Mr. Conway grew every moment more interesting, until I began to think he must be one of the most active men in America. When lecture-time came I was very willing to hear it. The Hall was very full. I sat with Miss Bartlett and Miss Leavitt. When the lecture had lasted an hour and a half I was still entirely interested, and in another quarter of an hour I didn't grow impatient, and thought I should like more, but a few minutes after, in a pause of Mr. Conway's I heard the sigh of the audience, and began to be restles too, so that when he came to an end at twenty five minutes of ten I was really relieved. Edward came and proposed to line it for home, without waiting for the elders, and on the way praised the lecture, said it was worth having to sit up so late for, and then lamented its length. As the rest of the party caught up Mr. Conway was heard exclaiming, Two hours? Never! (Yes, really, said Mr. Sanborn, it was full two hours.) No indeed! It is impossible. Mr. Conway pulled out his lecture and began to look it over with Mr. Sanborn, saying, Could I leave out that? and, Did I spread myself too much there? We left him with a glass of wine and a cracker, in the parlor, where he worked till one o'clock to shorten it. The next morning at breakfast he all but hugged himself, greatly pleased that he at least hadn't committed that particular crime in Boston.

In February, the newest editor of the Atlantic Monthly, James T. Fields, asked Thoreau to submit some of his recent work. Thoreau asked Fields what he was paying, sending along his Autumnal Hints. Fields paid him $100. Thoreau wrote at once to Ticknor & Fields, asking if they'd take over his 146 bound copies of A Week, and 450 in sheets, asking if they cared to re-issue his book, Walden. He then sent to Fields the essay published as Life Without Principle. In March Fields got the essay, Walking. In April Thoreau submitted to Fields yet another essay, Wild Apples.

The too short life of our Concord Poet-Naturalist was gliding to its close, Sanborn recalled, under my daily observation and appreciation.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Louisa May Alcott reported to a friend on April 6th, having only lately published his Emancipation in the West Indies, is now engaged to one of his teachers, Miss Louisa Leavitt, his cousin. Concord is in a state of intense excitement. She looks enough like him to be his twin sister, and is as cool and sharp as he. A pair of lemons they will be. Sugar will be needed to sweeten the compound. They are to be married in July, then it's on with the school, which is very easy as she is now his only teacher and won't need any salary when she is Mrs Sanborn. Few like it, as Miss Leavitt is not a favorite with anyone in town or school.

The bloody Battle of Shiloh came that April, 1862. The campaign to take Richmond was underway.

Henry David Thoreau died on May 6th.

He was one of the most original men of his time Sanborn proclaimed without hesitation. His townsmen felt his superiority of character, which clashed with their own assumed importance, in a social scale to which Thoreau paid little attention, -- perhaps too little, just as they paid too much. His satire and his riddles, which they had not the wit or the patience to guess, annoyed them, even as their dullness irritated him.

Father saw Thoreau the day before he died, Louisa May Alcott wrote a friend on May 11th, lying patiently and cheerfully on the bed he he would never leave again alive. He was very weak but suffered nothing, and talked in his old pleasant way. On Tuesday at eight in the morning he asked to be lifted, tried to help do it but was too weak, and lying down again he passed quietly and painlessly out of the old world into the new. On Friday, at Mr Emerson's desire, he was publicly buried from Concord's First Parish Church, a thing Henry would not have liked, but Emerson said his sorrow was so great, he wanted all the world to mourn with him. Some people felt the infidel Thoreau, having never went to church when living, ought not now be carried there dead. Many friends came from Boston and Worcester. Emerson read an address good in itself, but not appropriate to the time or place. Mr. Channing had written stanzas for a song that was sweetly sung. Father read selections from Henry's own books. It was a lovely day, clear and calm and spring like, and as we all walked after Henry's coffin carried by six of his townsmen who had grown up with him, it seemed as if Nature wore her most benign aspect to welcome her dutiful and loving son to his long sleep in her arms.

I enclose a little sprig of andromeda, Louisa added, Thoreau's favourite plant, a wreath of which we put on his coffin. P.S. Edward Emerson starts tomorrow on an overland trip to California. He goes with a party who are going to hunt buffaloes, camp out, and get scalped by the Indians.

Sanborn felt inclined to up and go with him, casting off his cares and obligations, to go back out on the open road, be it to California, Kansas, Timuctoo, or anywhere else. Having settled on the idea that he would marry again, he he had become immediately, and not mildly, unsettled. His new fiance, Louisa Augusta Leavitt, daughter of the stolid Boston merchant Joseph Melcher Leavitt of Woburn, was, like Sanborn, a grandchild of Squire Leavitt of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. Sanborn maintained every outward appearance of rationality and calm, but something just was not right. He was seething, brooding, restless.

In his mind's eye he kept seeing not Louisa, but Edith Emerson, and his heart ached. What if Edith were his fate? Could he ignore that? What if God wanted him to marry into the Emerson family? That would make sense. He was deserving, he told himself. He had not come to Concord for nothing. He was filled with sudden urges, inexplicable yearnings. Clinging desperately to his memories, still he wanted a fresh start, renewal. He wished he could shed his past like an old skin, to see if perhaps his manifest destiny was not something entirely different from what he had supposed, and had settled into. He would ask Ellen Emerson to marry him. Yes, that was what he'd do. She could be in love with him, for all he knew. He'd be loved by her, an Emerson, a woman not his mother, sister, cousin, nor the wife of a dead man.

In front of the Emerson house, tall gangling Sanborn stood shaking, taking Edith's hands in his. He stared deep into her lovely eyes for a sign, wanting to see his future happiness in them, telling her of his love. You are dear to me, Edith softly answered brash Sanborn -- as a friend.

Sanborn took this to mean she would not push him aside. He would hold her in his arms! This did not go well. As embarassed as exasperrated, Sanborn nevertheless proceeded, proposing marriage.

Edith turned him down. Perversely, he took this to mean he should try harder. In the days that followed Sanborn earnestly pursued her. When cheerfulness got no results, charming Sanborn turned to teasing and cajoling. Edith insisted he back off. Had he not understood her? Sanborn grimly began to follow her. When she pleaded with him to just leave her be, he said he could not. He stalked her. The more she said no, the more his mind was made up. He would have her. He was not going to take no for an answer.

Edith asked her mother what she should do. Mrs. Emerson invited Sanborn to tea, and they had a little talk. She was very careful to explain everything to Sanborn in such a way as not to hurt him, but so that he would not, conversely, somehow misunderstand her. He didn't like what he heard. He stormed out.

At home, at his writing table, Sanborn ran his hand through wet, heavy snarls of hair, sweat dripping down his fevered forehead, tears swelling in his eyes. He wrote to Edith, supposing what he wrote could only aggravate the situation, and yet he wrote. She found his diatribe as pathetic as hurtful. He got a letter back from Mrs. Emerson. Sanborn answered, defending himself, making Edith to blame for everything. He maligned her character. He swooned. His scathing, vitriolic invective frightened Sanborn himself. Perhaps he too had now come unhinged.

Somebody stop me, he thought, delivering his crazy letter to the Emerson home. The almost violent letter he got back from the protective, infuriated father, Ralph Waldo Emerson, demanded Sanborn cease at once, and let there be no misunderstanding. Cease, or all relations between Sanborn and himself, and his family, would cease. He urged Sanborn to drop the entire matter, to move on.

As if shaken from a bad dream, he got the message. This was no way to be. He knew he was no madman, but he'd been acting very mad. He gathered his civility and his dignity around him like a cloak. Humbled, repentant, he apologized to Louisa Leavitt, and her family. He likewise apologized to Edith, and to all her family. There would be no further mention of the matter again. For all anyone knew, the Emersons and the schoolmaster were on as friendly terms as ever.

Father constantly writes and reads about Mr. Thoreau, Ellen Emerson wrote to her frail brother Edward, then traveling in the West. He reads Mr. Channing's quotations from Thoreau's journal. They are very nice, and Father likes to read them. One of them Father considers a question for a game-party: SOME CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE IS VERY STRONG, Mr. Thoreau wrote, AS WHEN YOU FIND A TROUT IN THE MILK. Father wanted I should ask the game-party what that proved. I saw the moment I heard it and considered it so self evident as to be not worth mentioning, and long afterward Mother said, Or a mouse. Then I explained to her that wasn't the same thing, that it meant the milk was watered. Whereupon father said he hadn't thought of that before; of course that was right. I was amazed that he shouldn't have seen it, but I find few people do.

Sanborn remembered Captain Brown's warning, years before, his telling Sanborn he could be in danger of spoiling things, letting life pass him by, succumbing to his tendency to melancholy. You are too young to be married to a gravestone, Old Brown had said.

Sanborn's engagement to his cousin Louisa was on again. He swallowed his pride and got down on one knee, asking her to marry him. She said yes.

Sanborn had long been living under the tangible burden which his precious Ariana's death held over him. As his life proceeded, her presence had come to him graciously, as a guardian angel, or severely, tainted by his own consternation, which pressed on him like apoplexy in his teeming brain. In his desperate courtship of Edith Emerson, he had sought a swift release from his own accepted identity, and destiny. Emerson told him what Louisa Leavitt had told him: grow up. One could not force one's fate any more than one could run from it.

There was no doorframe you could brace your arms or legs against to hinder the inevitable. No alarms would alert angels to come to your defense, deferring what would be. No neighbors would come running to influence or alter the course that was your fate. Sanborn saw what his fate required.

On August 16, 1862, Sanborn married his second wife, his cousin Louisa Augusta Leavitt, whose graciousness, resourcefulness, and cheerfulness he had long admired and enjoyed. He knew already that her knees weren't glued together. He had gently pressed her warm and ample breasts to his proud, stern face. Just as so divine a pleasure could be thus tenderly unloosed, rising from a bodice, so could pulsing life itself be aroused, embraced, revered. He vowed he'd be yet more tender. He would love more. He would give more. All things come in their own seasons, he thought. Take that joy which life grants you, be it in even in so troubled times as these. Take heart, though the world be consummated in torrential scorn and turmoil.

They were married in Boston by Sanborn's Unitarian abolitionist friend, James Freeman Clarke, in his Church of the Disciples, where Clarke preached, War is like a fever, in which nature makes an effort to throw off some deep-seated evil worse than the fever. Is it not a grand thing to see all this flood of evil checked, even by the storm of war?

The Sanborns quietly closed the school, secretively honeymooning on Clarke's Island by Plymouth. Frank reported to his brother Joe that he’d been told the wedding had gone off well. He described the equitable climate, the fertile landscape, and some of the island’s characters. Summing up his honeymoon, he said he and Louisa were about as happy as any two people needed to be.

As for his career, which was never far from Sanborn’s thoughts, Frank described himself to his brother as an unsettled wanderer, busy visiting jails, almshouses, and other like charitable establishments, from Boston to Northampton, gathering information for official reports. He told Joe his plans for getting settled. The newlyweds were moving to Cambridge.

In Cambridge, the couple took an apartment with big rooms and good heating. Sanborn focused on his new bureaucratic post, especially on writing up reports. He would go into Boston mornings at nine, returning to Cambridge for dinner at two. Not often, but occasionally, he’d return again to Boston later in the afternoon. Evenings, Frank wrote his brother Joe, the couple would go to Boston to the opera, attend lectures, or make their way to parties in the homes of assorted Cambridge luminaries.

In Concord, word of the Sanborns and the mystery of their post-honeymoon whereabouts buzzed through the town. The only other news was of Edward Emerson's adventures in the West, or of the raging war.

Sanborn's war, Henry James Sr. called it.