His utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul.

In the course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was himself stabbed and cut.

Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops which had formed his escort were marched to their positions.
A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore apprehended.

This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed by Gerrit Smith of New York.
There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown, and in the South to make a devil of him.

As a matter of fact he was a poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave rebellion.
It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence.