Sketches from Concord and Appledore | Page 6

marshals tried to
carry him off by force to testify at Washington in regard to the Harper's
Ferry invasion, they all rushed to his rescue, and foremost among them
a Baltimore boy, who had been cursing his teacher as an infernal
abolitionist for the previous six months.
Mr. Sanborn is much better known for his connection with the Harper's
Ferry invasion than for his Concord school, or later service on the
board of State Charities. He was secretary of the Kansas Aid
Committee in Boston during 1856, and in this way became acquainted
with John Brown, who visited the school, and the two were afterwards
intimate friends.
None of Brown's New England supporters approved of his invasion of
Virginia, and Mr. Sanborn especially argued the matter with him and
endeavored to dissuade him from it. He thus became acquainted,
however, with Brown's plans, and was the only person outside of
Brown's immediate followers who knew of the proposed attack on
Harper's Ferry. When the attempt failed and John Brown was a prisoner
in Charlestown jail, Mr. Sanborn found himself, as an accessory before
the act, in a most trying situation. If carried to Virginia either as a
witness or as "particeps criminis" his chance for life would be a slight
one. The question was, would General Banks, who was then governor
of Massachusetts, refuse to surrender him. John A. Andrew did not
consider it safe to rely on him; and Mr. Sanborn accordingly
disappeared for the winter, his school being carried on meanwhile by
an assistant and some public spirited Concord ladies, one of whom was
a sister of Hon. E. R. Hoar.
In the spring Mr. Sanborn reappeared, and was almost immediately
summoned by a United States marshal to give an account of himself
before the senate committee in Washington. This he declined to do,
believing that the townspeople would forcibly resist any attempts to
carry him off.
The marshal, however, set a trap for him that missed little of being

successful. He came to Concord at midnight, and secreted himself in an
old barn which was close to the school-house, and belonged to one Mr.
Holbrook, a custom-house officer. There he remained all the next day,
keeping watch of Mr. Sanborn's movements through the cracks in the
boards. A little after nine in the evening he was joined by four
assistants in a carriage. They then proceeded to Mr. Sanborn's house,
seized him at the door, and in spite of his great size and strength, would
certainly have carried him off had it not been for the courage and
energy of his sister Sarah. She screamed "murder," and seizing the
carriage-whip, made such good use of it that the horses were with
difficulty prevented from running away.
Her cries waked up the blacksmith in the next house, and he quickly
came to the rescue. The "Bigelow girls" ran through the village like
wild cats ringing door-bells and calling on the people. In less than
twenty minutes nearly every man in town, Emerson included, was on
the spot. The crowd showed a determined spirit, and the marshals were
probably glad enough when Judge Hoar appeared with a writ of
"habeas corpus," and took the prisoner out of their hands in a legal
manner. The case was tried in Boston next day, and Mr. Sanborn was
adjudged to have the right of it. A lively celebration followed in the
Concord town hall that evening, and Miss Sarah Sanborn was presented
with an elegant revolver; but the old borough had not been so stirred up
since '75.
The place was not without some small entertainments. Every autumn
there was an annual cattle-show at which the same bulls, horses and
poultry were brought for exhibition, and one might suppose also the
same fruit and vegetables; for they differed little in appearance from
one year to another. A live bittern in a cage of laths was an unusual
curiosity. Ventriloquists and every kind of a juggler, as well as native
Indians and the wild men of Borneo, came to perform in the town hall.
Then there was the Concord Lyceum. People in those days believed in
obtaining nourishment for the mind as well as the body. Pretty dry
nourishment it often proved to be; but it served to bring them together
for an hour or two, and take them out of themselves and their dull
routine. Wiser remarks and more fresh information were sometimes
heard upon the stairway than in the lecture-hall.
Yet Emerson was always good, and every man and woman who came

to hear him probably felt better for it, even if they were unable to
comprehend what he said to them. In the mind's eyes one can see now
his spare figure standing at the desk between two large kerosene lamps,
bending