John Brown Trial: 1859

When he stood before Judge Parker on November 2, 1859, to receive his sentence, John Brown must have known he faced certain execution. Affirmation of the sentence by the Virginia Court of Appeals would be a formality. Brown used the occasion, however, to make a stirring statement that would galvanize Northern public opinion against slavery and the South:

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—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!

In the month following Brown's sentencing, Governor Wise received thousands of letters and petitions pleading for mercy. Some came from astute Southerners, who realized that Brown's execution would rally anti-slavery forces. Nevertheless, Wise let the sentence stand. On December 2, 1859, before he went to the gallows, Brown delivered his final message to North and South alike, one that predicted and sealed in the minds of many Americans the inevitability of the Civil War:

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.