A Plea for Captain John Brown

“A Plea for Captain John Brown” is a defense of radical abolitionist John Brown that seeks to set right the allegations of mental illness leveled against him by the press and to excoriate the Church for its complacency on the issue of slavery. The Church’s central place in early American history informs the tone and diction Henry David Thoreau employs as well as the metaphor and allusion present throughout the essay. This makes the location of the speech quite important. Thoreau first delivered his address at the First Concord Church in Concord, Massachusetts. The church had been established by Puritan leaders in 1636, and the first battle of the Revolutionary War took place partially on church grounds. Thoreau himself had once been a member of this congregation but left it in 1841 when membership was no longer compulsory. This layered history made Thoreau’s presentation all the more significant, as he connected Brown’s actions to freedom, one of the founding principles of the US, and to the moral imperative at the heart of Christianity—both ideals central to the Concord Church in which he spoke.