Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today, in politics on trial, I'm talking about the trial in 1859 of John Brown that some people think caused, or at least led to, the American Civil War.

Whether it did or didn't, it is one of the most important trials of the 19th century, and it certainly defined what that war was about.

So far in this series, I've been talking about the trials of people who, by the time they reached

the courtroom, different kinds of courtrooms, were already world historical figures, or if not that, at least within

their own nations or within their own time, really, really significant people, Socrates.

Joan of Arc, she was a nobody, but by the time she was on trial, she was probably the most famous

woman in Christendom, Queens, Mary Queen of Scott, Kings, Charles

I, Louis XVIth, Thomas Moore, when he went on trial, all of Europe was watching. Even Warren

Hastings, not much known now, when his trial started, he was one of the dominant figures of the age,

not so much by the time

it ended seven years later.

But the person I'm talking about today was very well known before his trial, but he wasn't

a world historical figure, even within his own nation, the United States.

He was one of many people who were making the news, one might say, making a difference,

but it was his trial, the event that precipitated it, the trial itself, and what followed

his trial, that made him a central figure of his time and in some ways a central figure

ever since, one of the most important people of the 19th century. So it was the trial that

did it. And that makes this story a bit different from the other stories I've been telling.

And in particular, not just the trial, but some of the things that were said during the trial,

above all, a speech that John Brown himself gave after he'd been convicted, which is one of the

great speeches of American history. It's not that John Brown himself was a nobody before he was put

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