Early years and education[edit]

Franklin Sanborn was born at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the son of Aaron and Lydia
(Leavitt) Sanborn.[1] He already believed himself capable of making a stir in the world by the age
of two, having held up a stick in a thunderstorm and experienced being struck by lightning. At
age nine, following careful reading of the pro-emancipation journals The National Era and Horace
Greeley's New-York Tribune, Frank announced to his family that slavery was wrong and the
United States Constitution should be revised or revoked.[2]
In 1850, at the suggestion of his future wife Ariana Walker, Sanborn arranged to study with the
Exeter teacher and private tutor John Gibson Hoyt. He would focus on Greek for a year, then
enter Phillips Exeter Academy. This was followed by enrollment at Harvard, from which he
graduated in 1855.

Sanborn was active in politics as a member of the Free Soil Party in New Hampshire and
Massachusetts.[3] In 1856, he became secretary of the Massachusetts Kansas Commission[4] and
came into close touch with John Brown. Sanborn was one of six influential men who supplied Brown
with support for the raid on Harper's Ferry on October 16–18, 1859. This group was later termed the
Secret Six. Although Sanborn disavowed advance-knowledge of the attack, he would defend Brown
to the end of his life, assist in the support of Brown's widow and children, and make periodic
pilgrimages to his grave.[5]

On the night of April 3, 1860, five federal marshals arrived at Frank Sanborn's home in Concord,
handcuffed him and attempted to wrestle him into a coach and take him to Washington to answer
questions before the Senate in regard to his involvement with John Brown. Approximately 150
townspeople rushed to Sanborn's defense. Judge Ebenezer R. Hoar issued a writ of replevin, formally
demanding the surrender of the prisoner. In a letter to a friend, Louisa May Alcott wrote, "Sanborn
was nearly kidnapped. Great ferment in town. Annie Whiting immortalized herself by getting into
the kidnapper's carriage so that they could not put the long legged martyr in."[6]

Frank Sanborn died February 24, 1917, after being struck by a railroad baggage cart during a visit to
his son Francis in New Jersey. He was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord near the graves
of his friends and mentors Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Ellery Channing, and Henry
Thoreau. Concord's flags were flown at half-mast for three days. At the end of the month, February,
1917, just prior to America's entering World War I, the Massachusetts House of Representatives
recognized Sanborn's dedication to the unfortunate, the diseased, and the despised, citing Sanborn's
role as a confidential adviser to John Brown, "for whose sake he was arrested, mistreated, and
nearly deported."[13]

People loved and hated him. Walt Whitman described Sanborn as "a fighter, up in arms, a devotee, a
revolutionary crusader, hot in the collar, quick on the trigger, noble, optimistic." Henry David
Thoreau feared the passionate Concord schoolteacher was "only too steadfast and earnest", a type,
as Thoreau put it, "that calmly, so calmly, ignites and then throws bomb after bomb." Sanborn lived
a long life. He was revered in the end as a relic from a golden age gone by—a tall and venerable
figure moving picturesquely through Boston and Concord.[14]