In-between reading everything else (including the Chernow brick) I have also been reading John Brown, by W.E.B. Du Bois. I found this statement that Brown had to say on the matter of his conviction of Treason against Virginia:
"In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, -- the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when i went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again , on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite, or to incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection" W.E.B. Du Bois, John Brown, [p216]