John Brown's last speech, so called by his first biographer, James Redpath, was delivered on November 2, 1859. John Brown was being sentenced in a courtroom packed with whites in Charles Town, Virginia, after his conviction for murder, treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, and inciting a slave insurrection. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the speech's only equal in American oratory was the Gettysburg Address.
As was his custom, Brown spoke extemporaneously and without notes, although he had evidently thought about what he would say and he knew the opportunity was coming. Transcribed by a phonographer (reporter-stenographer), which newspapers used for important speeches, it was on the next day's front page of countless newspapers nationwide, including The New York Times.
The American Anti-Slavery Society then predicted that his execution would begin his martyrdom, or that potential clemency would remove "so much capital [...] out of the abolition sails".
Virginia court procedure required that defendants found guilty should be asked if there was any reason the sentence should not be imposed. Asked this by the clerk, Brown immediately rose, and in a clear, distinct voice said this:
While Brown was speaking, there was "perfect quiet" in the courtroom. Under Virginia law, one month must elapse between a death sentence and its execution, so the judge, Richard Parker, then sentenced Brown to be hanged one month later, on December 2, and specified that, for the sake of example, the execution would be more public than usual.
The courtroom continued silence after the reading of the death sentence. "One indecent fellow, behind the Judge's chair, shouted and clapped hands jubilantly; but he was indignantly checked, and in a manner that induced him to believe that he would do best to retire." "This undecorum was promptly suppressed and much regret was expressed by citizens at its occurrence."
There were multiple reporters covering Brown's trial. Thanks to the recently invented telegraph, they sent out immediate copy. Brown's speech was distributed by the Associated Press and was the next day, November 3, on the front page of the New York Times, the Richmond Dispatch, the Detroit Free Press, the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, and other newspapers. Over the next few days, the full text appeared in approximately 50 other papers across the country. William Lloyd Garrison printed it broadside as a poster and sold it in the Liberators office in Boston. The American Anti-Slavery Society published it in a pamphlet, with extracts from Brown's letters. A verse on the title page, "He, being dead, yet speaketh" (), compares Brown with Abel, killed by Cain.
In the evening of December 1, as many of the papers reported together with Brown's speech, the abolitionist Wendell Phillips gave a speech in Brooklyn, in Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church, an important abolitionist center and Underground Railroad station. Though the talk had been scheduled in advance, on "The Lesson of the Hour", the topic of John Brown had not been announced and was a surprise to those present. According to Phillips, in the lead story on page 1 of the New York Herald:
Frederick Douglass, having escaped to Canada from a Virginia warrant, also referred to "the thing calling itself the Government of Virginia, but which in fact is but an organized conspiracy by one party of the people against the other and weaker".
On November 1, in Boston, the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society resolved to observe "that tragical event" of Brown's forthcoming execution. The yet undefined action of observation would be "the first step towards making Brown a Martyr, but should Governor Wise see fit to reprieve him, so much capital will be taken out of the abolition sails".
The prosecuting attorney, Andrew Hunter, published 30 years later his recollections of the speech:
In his firsthand account written and published 50 years later, Leech stated the following. "Brown's statement was not exactly sustained by the facts. Why had he collected the Sharpe's rifles, the pikes, the kegs of powder, many thousands of caps and much war-like material at the Kennedy farm? Why did he and other armed men break into the United States Armory and Arsenal, make portholes in the engine house, shoot and kill citizens, and surround their own imprisoned persons with prominent men as hostages? But everybody in the court house believed the old man when he said that he did everything with a solitary motive, the liberation of the slaves."
Modern critics have challenged the veracity of John Brown's framing of events; Alfred Kazin called it Brown's "great, lying speech". Brown's biographer David S. Reynolds claims, "The Gettysburg Address similarly glossed over disturbing details in the interest of making a higher point. Lincoln left out the bloody horrors of the Civil War, just as Brown minimized his bloody tactics."
Also according to Reynolds, with this speech, both North and South stopped seeing Brown as only an irritating extremist. It was clear that he was a Christian and an American. The South scrambled to denounce him as simply a villain. The North began to regard him as a hero.
The cross â indicates that the speech appears on page 1.<br> The asterisk * indicates that the speech is accompanied by discussion or other related news.