Secret Six

The Secret Six were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns.

All six had been involved in the abolitionist cause prior to their meeting John Brown, and had gradually become convinced that violence was necessary in order to end American slavery.

The others consisted of two Unitarian ministers (Parker and Higginson), a doctor (Howe) at a time when physicians were not well-to-do, and a teacher (Sanborn).

Speculation and then testimony, reported in The New York Times, New-York Herald, and other papers, began to link the names of the Six with Brown's.

Parker was already in Italy, a guest of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as it was believed that a warm climate was helpful to those suffering from tuberculosis.

"We expected he would go farther west, into a region less accessible, where his movements might escape notice for weeks, except as the alleged acts of some marauding party.

"[3]: 1949–1953 On the night of April 3, 1860, five federal marshals arrived at Frank Sanborn's home in Concord, Massachusetts, 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.

[3]: 1885–1889 For the remainder of their lives, Higginson, Sanborn, and Stearns made periodic pilgrimages to Brown's grave in North Elba, New York.

"[5]: 273 In 1905, Higginson co-founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, along with attorney Clarence Darrow, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair.

[6] After Sanborn's death in 1917, the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts adopted a bill applauding him for his various life works, with special mention given to Sanborn's role as "confidential adviser to John Brown of Harper's Ferry, for whose sake he was ostracized, maltreated, and subjected to the indignity of false arrest, having been saved from deportation from Massachusetts only by mob violence.

The Secret Six who helped John Brown
John Brown inside the engine house at the Harpers Ferry Armory , with two sons at his feet, one dead and the other dying.
Frank Sanborn resists arrest by federal marshals
Higginson, Sanborn, and Sterns made periodic pilgrimages to the grave of John Brown in North Elba, New York, which has since been designated a New York State Historic Site. His tombstone is protected by glass.