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John Brown's Final Speech to the Court before His Death (1859)

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John Brown's Final Speech to the Court before His Death (1859)

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" [...] had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!"

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"Last Moments of John Brown" by Thomas Hovenden, 1884

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"Last Moments of John Brown" by Thomas Hovenden, 1884

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"Tragic Prelude", mural in the Kansas State Capitol by John Steuart Curry (1938-1942)

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"Tragic Prelude", mural in the Kansas State Capitol by John Steuart Curry (1938-1942)

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Article on the Harpers Ferry Raid from the "Tribune" Newspaper (October 1859)

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Article on the Harpers Ferry Raid from the "Tribune" Newspaper (October 1859)

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“Never before was such an uproar raised by twenty men as by Old Brown and his confederates in this deplorable affair. There will be enough to heap execration on the memory of these mistaken men. We leave this work to the fit hands and tongues of those who regard the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence as ‘glittering generalities.’ Believing that the way to Universal Emancipation lies not through insurrection, civil war and blood shed, but through peace, discussion, and the quiet diffusion of sentiments of humanity and justice, we deeply regret this outbreak; but, remembering that, if their fault was grievous, grievously have they answered it. We will not, by one reproachful word, disturb the bloody shrouds wherein (John Brown and) his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be the right, though in a manner which seems to be fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the not distant day when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello, or by the graves of Mount Vernon.”

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"John Brown and his Sons in the Engine House, Harpers Ferry" (1859)

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"John Brown and his Sons in the Engine House, Harpers Ferry" (1859)

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The text below drawing reads, "With one son dead by his side, and another dying, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other."

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"John Brown, Man of Action" Article on PBS

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"John Brown, Man of Action" Article on PBS

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John Brown was a man of action -- a man who would not be deterred from his mission of abolishing slavery....John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five, to a district that would become known for its antislavery views.

Working at various times as a farmer...he gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves. In Kansas, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year.

Brown returned to the east and began to think more seriously about his plan for a war in Virginia against slavery. He sought money to fund an "army" he would lead. On October 16, 1859, he set his plan to action when he and 21 other men -- 5 blacks and 16 whites -- raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.