I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: the design on my part to free the slaves. Had I interfered on behalf of the rich, the powerful, the so-called great, every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
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The post above is condensed. From the original, word for word
"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, — the design on my part to free the slaves. [...] had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great [...] it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment."
Between the posts · the narrator, not the paper
November 2. Convicted of treason against Virginia, of murder, and of inciting insurrection, Brown rises to speak before his sentence is read. The date fixed for the hanging is one month out: December 2.
Spoken on receiving the death sentence. Brown's last speech survives in genuinely variant printings, and they differ on this passage: the Library of Congress broadside (item 2021770281) reads “what I have already admitted, of a design on my part to free slaves,” while the wording here — the widely anthologized one — is cited to a printing that carries it (Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, 1885). The Famous Trials transcription matches this wording word for word; the LoC broadside remains a real artifact of the variant reading.
Read it in the original — Sanborn’s Life and Letters of John Brown (1885) ↗