I send you our Prospectus for our Concord Summer School, Alcott wrote his Western friend Professor Harris in January, 1879. As you will see, you are to teach the course in Speculative Philosophy. We cannot afford to spare you from our Faculty. This prospectus has not yet been published, but awaits the acceptance of the persons named before it is given out to be advertised in the public Journals. This idea has been a dream of mine for some years. It now seems quite practicable, what with our list of Professors named in the Prospectus, and Sanborn as Secretary of the Faculty and myself as Dean. It is being looked upon from many quarters with much favor, particularly by students, and seekers for light, both in the East and the West. I have many opportunities for Conversing and, being in perfect health and hope, enjoy them highly. Write at once, that we may issue our prospectus soon.

How many copies of the Prospectus do you wish to distribute? Alcott inquired of Harris in February. We shall print a thousand. May we look for a paragraph from you in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, stating your approval of the School? P.S. My house is still unoccupied. If you please, come and take possession of it, on your own terms. Our School does not open till July 21st. If you will not come, I will perhaps rent it to Samuel H. Emery, of Quincy, Illinois. Think on it.

Taking a fresh sheet of writing paper, Alcott next wrote to Emery, I wrote you recently, and enclosed a Prospectus for our Concord Summer School. Suspecting misdirection of my letter, I now write again. When you visited us last summer you said you thought of making Concord your place of residence, intimating your removal here sometime during this spring or summer. If I remember rightly, you thought you might like to occupy my House. It has been tenantless for a year and more, as I have not wished to rent it to such applicants as have been disposed to occupy it. Now it would please me much to learn that you still thought of coming to Concord, and of taking my House. Will you write at once, informing me of your plans and expectations? We should like to find you and Mrs. Emery neighbors of ours, and host and hostess for the reception of our Classes during the Summer Sessions of our school.

He dashed off similar letters to acquaintances and friends: I send you a copy of the prospectus of our Summer School. May I indulge the hope that you will make your home in our village, perhaps in The Orchard House itself? It is still tenantless, and I should delight in finding yourself and yours the occupants. Will you write at once, informing me of your wishes and expectations?

Ultimately, Mr. and Mrs. Emery would take Bronson up on his offer. On June 7, 1879, Alcott wrote Harris, Emery brought his goods yesterday and will take possession of the Orchard House in just a few days. He tells me he has written you, inviting you to be his guest during our Summer sessions of the School. And Dr. Jones will, I hope, be Sanborn's guest. What could possibly now hinder our taking some flights in these summer days?

Emerson was the featured speaker at Concord's Independence Day celebration that year, held on July 5th. An ambivalent Ellen Emerson wrote her sister Edith to say she was both wary and confirdent: Edward and Annie did attack me about Father's reading. I surrendered the matter at once into Edward's hands, only I told him Father had begun to study it by himself, and that must be taken into consideration. This, Edward said, altered the aspect of affairs, and he let it go. Father read it perfectly well I thought. I sat on the platform behind him among the singers. There was great clapping when he rose, and shouts of Up! Stand up! The whole house rose, and continued great applause. When he sat down another round of tremendous clapping arose, George Bartlett calling, Three cheers for the man whose voice is heard round the world! When I surveyed the audience I found the Hall was full. This I hadn't expected, and it was very inspiriting. I saw everybody I knew and many strangers. Then came the procession. Judge Hoar was introduced as the President of the day. He made a beautiful speech, which filled all hearts with joy, about the meaning, the use, the moral of Independence Day, and introduced Father as the grandson of our Revolutionary minister. Then came those demonstrations I wrote about above. Oh! I forgot the singing. Judge Hoar introduced the choir before he spoke himself and we sang Speed Our Republic. He introduced the Ode and invited us to sing it. Then came Father, and then didn't we stand up and holler the Star-Spangled Banner! All four verses. After that the concourse was invited to join the choir in siging America. And that was the end. Everyone wanted to go on. That night we went to Mrs. Sanborn's, for tea. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner was there, Miss Leavitt, and Mrs. Edward Hoar. We had a beautiful time.

On July 15, 1879, without any particular fanfare, the Concord School of Philosophy officially opened its doors to the world.

Though the School was realized through the vision and activity of Bronson Alcott, few persons knew the original idea was Emerson's, Sanborn would write in his Recollections. Or rather, it was a common thought of Emerson and Alcott, thrown into the form of a proposition by Emerson in a letter to Margaret Fuller of August 1840. He had then written: Alcott and I projected a whole university out of our straws. George Ripley, Henry Hedge, Theodore Parker, Mr. Alcott and I shall in some country town, say Concord or Hyannis, announce that we shall hold a semester for the instruction of young men, say from October to April. Each shall announce his own subject and topics, with what detail he pleases. We shall sleep no more, and we shall concert better houses, economies, and social modes than any we have seen.

Emerson had projected the instructors would be the best qualified in all the world, including Daniel Webster, Carlyle, Washington Irving. There would be no rules or limitations. Each pupil would pay either according to his means or according to that value each would determine for himself as being appropriate payment for benefits received. Teacher would announce their own topics, to be treated as they pleased.

Sanborn noticed that although Emerson's original plans included a winter school, and longer terms, the peculiarities of the scheme were very like those of the Summer School of Philosophy as it was now shaping up to be. Three persons, out of six named by Emerson in 1840, alive in 1879, actually took part in our enterprise: Alcott, Emerson, and Dr. Hedge. Had the others lived they, no doubt, would have done so, too.

At the bidding of their landlord, the Emerys had taken in Dr. Harris as their house guest, also agreeing that the house's study would serve as The School's campus center. The School's central committee would consist of Alcott as Dean, Dr. Harris replacing Sanborn as Secretary, him having become the School Treasurer. Sessions were held at the Orchard House and grounds, each lasting six weeks, with five chief lecturers, and with seven other lecturers, speaking on Saturdays or filling in during the week as substitutes. Sanborn would scrap together from notes he'd been compiling since his student days a series of lectures on another of his unlikely early idols, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

During the whole ten years of its continuance, there must have been at least fifty lecturers and debaters, Sanborn would later note. Among our faculty were Emerson, William James, Frederick Henry Hedge, Charles William Eliot, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Peabody, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. These luminaries lectured not only on Philosophy and Literature, but also on Art, Aesthetics, Religion, Psychology, and Women's Rights. These would attract some fifteen thousand pupils, young and old, some of them from as far away as Calcutta.

Father has his dream at last, Louisa May Alcott wrote in her diary that first summer of the School. People laugh, but we'll enjoy this new thing in our dull old town. The fresh Westerners will show them that all the culture of the world is not in Concord. The town swarms with budding philosophers. They roost on our step like hens, waiting for corn. Father revels in it, so we keep the hotel going and try to look as if we like it, thinking philosophic speculation a waste of time when there is so much real work crying to be done. Why discuss the Unknowable till our poor are fed and the wicked saved?

In this same July, in which this swarm of speculative philosophers descended on Concord, Sanborn was just wrapping up work on a very practical, often mundane, entirely unsung second re-organization of the state's Charities and Prisons, and was appointed Massachusetts General Inspector of Charities, which he'd be through the next nine years.

On July 24th Ellen went with her Mother and family friends to Boston, expressly to see to it that Mrs. Emerson would have her picture taken at Hawe's photography studio. Edward had advised his sister, ahead of time, that securing Mrs. Sanborn for the occasion would be wise. She is known to make Mrs. Emerson smile and laugh, Ellen reported. Her society is particularly exhilarating to Mother and may give more life to her expression.

Riding on the Boston, Concord, & Montreal Railroad, Ellen wrote her sister: I have this good chance to write you but no ink. Do you know I went to the School of Philosophy on Saturday and found it so excellent that I'm afraid I have done very wrong in not arranging to go all the time. To be sure it was a great day, Professor Pierce day. You ought to have heard the unintelligible introduction to his lecture. It gave me a queer sensation to hear my native language and receive no clear idea when one evidently was expressed. It sounded a good deal like Twas brillig and the slithy toves. But after a while a light began to dawn and, by and by, it came out and everyone in the room could understand and was refreshed. Then did the philosophers begin to question him, and I gaped upon them. Did those questions really mean anything? What learned men! Where did they dig up the amazing words they used? Did they understand them themselves?

Between September 11 and 13, Alcott And Sanborn joined Elizabeth Peabody in traveling to and from Saratoga, New York, where the 1879 Social Science Association Convention was being held, where General Inspector Sanborn could hobnob with his peers, noting such improvements in Massachusetts as the new workhouse at Bridgewater, where were sent the hundreds of inebriates and tramps who had formerly gone to the county prisons and the local poorhouses, under sentence.

It was at at this same time that my friend Governor Talbot offered my professional colleague Zebulon Brockway an important position at the reformatory prison in Concord, Sanborn remembered, but my friend Brockway was then in the full tide of his success at the Elmira Reformatory, and chose to stay in New York.

Yesterday I consented to join a party making a round trip to Lake George, Bronson Alcott wrote a Boston acquaintance after the Saratoga conference. We left at midnight and reached Concord in time for breakfast.

Our circulars for next summer's School of Philosophy are just issued, Alcott wrote in October to Harris, who had returned to St. Louis. I make haste to forward you a copy. I purpose following it to St. Louis soon, to discuss with you personally future prospects and plans for the School, and for yourself, if you will. I cannot now determine accurately my route, nor the time of leaving Concord, but will apprize you when I have laid my plans more definitely. Meanwhile, and before I leave home, will you mail a Postal Card, saying that you approve or otherwise our arrangements for next Session of the school? Will you also inform me if you are willing to give your name as one of the Incorporators of the School, along with Dr. Jones, Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Denman, Mr. Emery, Mr. Sanborn and myself, seven in all. We think it well to get it Incorporated, particularly if, as we now contemplate, we hold Winter Sessions of six months, and make the School a permanent Institution. In order to make this assured, your residence here seems most important, certainly during a part of the year. I am authorized to say that Mrs. Thompson will pledge $500 towards your coming, and I offer you the occupancy of the Orchard, for any compensation that you may name, free for the first year. Mrs Thompson is disposed to help us, and will add another $500, if that sum shall be found necessary. I shall avail my self of opportunities to speak of the School in my coming Western tour. If the School is to continue to be, you are essential to its existence.

On December 31, 1879, the 80 year old Alcott sadly took his pen in hand to tell a friend of his daughter May Alcott Niericker's death two days before. Her husband Ernest had sent a telegram from Paris to Ralph Waldo Emerson, thinking him the best person to tell the Alcotts the unexpected news. -- This morning Mr. Emerson brought with tearful countenance the telegram announcing the sad event. She leaves her baby daughter, Louisa May, to console us under this unexpected bereavement. The bright, joyous spirit is gone. Anna and Louisa are stricken with deep sorrow.

At the close of 1879, Sanborn got from one of Brown's company, James Townsley, a full statement confessing his presence and participation at the Pottawatomie Massacre of Kansas. He reported Brown had fired at least one of the fatal shots that night. To substantiate or refute the claim, Sanborn interviewed John Brown's son Owen, whose account Sanborn would rely on in reporting the massacre in his 1885 Life of Brown.

Townsley's confession ran counter to the silence, and the denials, of John Brown's surviving family through the years. Still, Sanborn would not believe. Having fully chastised Gerrit Smith on his deathbed for the old man's persistent s denials of complicity in Brown's acts, Sanborn now began to sweat, comitting to paper his own rationalizations and justifications for having aided a perpetrator of massacres. He, the respectable and venerable Franklin B. Sanborn, co-founder of the Concord School of Philosophy, secretary or president to countless distinguished social associations, official State Inspector of Asylums and Prisons, had stood face to face with the great, noble, good Captain Brown. Palms sweating, Sanborn's hand clutched his pencil like a lifeline or anchor in an angry sea of possibilities. Over and over Sanborn drafted his assorted Proofs of Brown's innocence, writing and re-writing, then writing again, deleting afterwards what he had written. Then he'd begin again. He knew: it didn't add up. But he could not admit even to himself that of all people he, F. B. Sanborn, had aided an Osawatomie Brown, a perpetrator of vicious, premeditated slaughter.

John Brown's widow Mary, then living with her daughter Sarah in Saratoga, California, received word from Sanborn that he and certain friends of his were intending to start a fund, the interest of which would be provided for her benefit. He inquired whether such a fund was needed, or even appropriate. Sarah, a past pupil of Sanborn's, wrote on behalf of her mother, saying she was not in any financial distress, but was nonetheless appreciative of the generosity and consideration afforded her by Sanborn and his eastern friends.

Come to Concord! Alcott wrote Harris in March. Your assurance gives us all much joy. The Orchard House is ready for your occupancy. The carpenters will begin work on The Chapel, so that it will be completed before your arrial here. We will also hope your Journal of Speculative Philosophy, as it is in many ways representative of the Concord School of thought, will also be issued from Concord. This whole Idea of the School has suddenly budded, promising fruits that not even the most extravagent fancy could have dared in its fondest freaks. We are now looking for William Henry Channing's arrival from London. He has written that he purposes to be with us during the Summer Session of the School, and will doubtless gie us some lectures on Oriental Ideas. Did I tell you that since January I have been happily busied in writing verses, now nearing 800 lines, entitled New Connecticut, of which Sanborn thinks favorably.

The carpenters have begun work on The Chapel, Alcott wrote Harris in May. They promise to complete it without delay. The Orchard House is, I believe, in good repair. Applications for attending the School reach us almost daily. We may reasonably anticipate a full attendance. We have bespoke of housekeepers in the village lodgings for our visitors. Now if you will just fix your residence here, the future of Philosophic Thought will not depart to less worthy places. We will consent to let you rove widely if you will, meanwhile, but Concord to be your abiding home. Where else should Philosophy fix her seat? Can I further your removal from St. Louis in any way not yet known by me?

We are as happy as we can be here, Ellen Emerson wrote her sister at the end of July. We are hosts to such a goodly company, including Mr. William Henry Channing. Mr. Alcott, Mr. Sanborn, and the other philosophers all keep themselves busily engaged in their comings and goings