A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown’s execution on December 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860.1
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“If weakness may excuse,
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All wickedness is weakness: that plea therefore
With God or man will gain thee no remission.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Sterling Allen Brown (b. 1901)