John Brown's last speech

Common card · No. 325033

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; the modern-day American Bar Association ranks it as one of the famous spoken allocutions of American history. As was his custom, Brown spoke without notes. 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".

Read on Wikipedia · Image David C. Lithgow, Public domain