[8]: 23 Brown's raid caused much excitement and anxiety throughout the United States,[9] with the South seeing it as a threat to slavery and thus their way of life, and some in the North perceiving it as a bold abolitionist action.

[3]: 4 John Brown rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, with a small cabin nearby, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Harpers Ferry, in Washington County, Maryland,[11] and took up residence under the name Isaac Smith.

[20] The United States Armory was a large complex of buildings that manufactured small arms for the U.S. Army (1801–1861), with an Arsenal (weapons storehouse) that was thought to contain at the time 100,000 muskets and rifles.

As a result, the raiders had to stay indoors during the daytime, without much to do but study (Brown recommended Plutarch's Lives),[27] drill, argue politics, discuss religion, and play cards and checkers.

He planned to send agents to nearby plantations, rallying the slaves, and to hold Harpers Ferry for a short time, with the expectation that as many volunteers, white and black, would join him as would form against him.

The South, starting with Governor Wise, whose speech after Harpers Ferry was reprinted widely, proclaimed that this showed the truth of their old allegation, that their slaves were happy and did not want freedom.

Osborne Anderson, the only raider to leave a memoir, and the only black survivor, put the lie to this: The Sunday evening of the outbreak, when we visited the plantations and acquainted the slaves with our purpose to effect their liberation, the greatest enthusiasm was manifested by them—joy and hilarity beamed from every countenance.

[40]: 39 A free black man was the first fatality to result from the raid: Heyward Shepherd, a baggage handler at the Harpers Ferry train station, who had ventured out onto the bridge to look for a watchman who had been driven off by Brown's raiders.

Instead of going home he started the alarm, having the bell on the Lutheran church rung, sending a messenger to summon help from Charles Town, and then going there himself, after having notified such local men as could be contacted quickly.

[8]: 7, 15  At that point Smith informed the railroad president, John W. Garrett, who sent telegrams to Major General George H. Steuart of the First Light Division, Maryland Volunteers, Virginia Governor Henry A.

"[74] "A substantial proportion of the militia (along with many of the townspeople) had become a disorganized, drunken, and cowering mob by the time that Colonel Robert E. Lee and the U.S. Marines captured Brown on Tuesday, October 18."

[75] Brown's third participating son, Owen, escaped (with great difficulty) via Pennsylvania to the relative safety of his brother John Jr.'s house in Ashtabula County in northeast Ohio,[76] but he was not part of the Harpers Ferry action; he was guarding the weapons at their base, the Kennedy Farm, just across the river in Maryland.

Late in the afternoon President Buchanan called out a detachment of U.S. Marines from the Washington Navy Yard, the only federal troops in the immediate area: 81 privates, 11 sergeants, 13 corporals, and 1 bugler, armed with seven howitzers.

To command them Buchanan ordered Brevet Colonel[71]: xv  Robert E. Lee, conveniently on leave at his home, just across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, to "repair" to Harpers Ferry,[71][78] where he arrived about 10 PM, on a special train.

Only the steadiness of the trained marines, under the command of that great soldier Robert E. Lee, then an unknown colonel of the United States Army, prevented the butchery of the entire gang of outlaws.

"A detail of [Greene's] men" carried Brown and Edwin Coppock, the only other white survivor of the attack on the engine house, to the adjacent office of the paymaster,[4]: 568  where they lay on the floor for over a day.

Until they went with the group to the Charles Town jail on Wednesday, there is no record of the location of the two surviving captured black raiders, Shields Green and John Anthony Copeland, who were also the only two survivors of the engine house with no injuries.

[87] Up until this point, most public opinion in the North and West had seen Brown as a fanatic, a crazy man, attacking Virginia with only 22 men, of whom 10 were killed immediately, and 7 others would soon be hanged, as well as 5 deaths and 9 injuries among the Marines and local population.

Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection, and in a good cause, and with a sufficient force, would have been a consummate partisan commander.

The conspiracy was, unquestionably, far more extended than yet appears, numbering among the conspirators many more than the handful of followers who assailed Harpers Ferry, and having in the North and West, if not also the South, as its counselors and abettors, men of intelligence, position and wealth.

[92]: 176 n. 24 [93] "Learning how quickly the Marines had crushed the raid, Wise 'boiled over', and said he would rather have lost both legs and both arms from his shoulders and hips than such a disgrace should have been cast upon it [Virginia, since Brown held off all the local militia].

That fourteen white men and five negroes should have captured the government works and all Harper's Ferry, and have found It possible to retain them for [even] one hour, while Col. Lee, with twelve marines, settled the matter in ten minutes.

"[94][58]: 194 Wise interviewed Brown while he, along with Stevens, was lying on the floor of the paymaster's office at the Arsenal, where they would remain until, over thirty hours later, they were moved to the Jefferson County jail.

Congressmen Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, who called Brown "sincere, earnest, practical",[100] Charles J. Faulkner of Virginia, Robert E. Lee,[46]: 46  and "several other distinguished gentlemen" were also present.

According to the Richmond Enquirer, "The Harper's Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion, more than any other event that has happened since the formation of the Government; it has rallied to that standard men who formerly looked upon it with horror; it has revived, with ten fold [sic] strength the desire of a Southern Confederacy.

"[112] His well-publicized raid, a complete failure in the short term, contributed to Lincoln's election in 1860, and Jefferson Davis "cited the attack as grounds for Southerners to leave the Union, 'even if it rushes us into a sea of blood.

In Harpers Ferry today, the engine house, now known as John Brown's Fort, sits in a park, open to walk through, where there is an interpretive display summarizing the events.

[3]: 236  According to Garrison, "His raid into Virginia looks utterly lacking in common sense—a desperate self-sacrifice for the purpose of giving an earthquake shock to the slave system, and thus hastening the day for a universal catastrophe.

[3]: 238 As Brown wrote in 1851: "The trial for life of one bold and to some extent successful man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and suffering of more than three millions of our submissive colored population.

"[3]: 240  Authorities deliberately prevented spectators from being close enough to Brown to hear him speak during his short trip to the gallows, but he did give what became his famous final message to a jailer who had asked for his autograph.