A desultory fire was kept up through doors and loop-holes.  But now the whole country had become thoroughly aroused, and sundry military companies from neighboring towns and counties poured into Harper’s Ferry.  Brown himself at length realized the hopelessness of his position, and parleyed for leave to retreat across the river on condition of his giving up his prisoners; but it was too late.  President Buchanan also took prompt measures; and on Monday night a detachment of eighty marines from the Washington navy-yard, under command of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the United States army, the same who afterwards became the principal leader of the Confederate armies in the rebellion, reached the scene of action, and were stationed in the armory yard so as to cut off the insurgents from all retreat.  At daylight on Tuesday morning Brown was summoned to surrender at discretion, but he refused.  The instant the officer left the engine-house a storming-party of marines battered in the doors; in five minutes the conflict was over.  One marine was shot dead in the assault; Brown fell under severe sword and bayonet wounds, two of his sons lay dead or dying, and four or five of his men were made prisoners, only two remaining unhurt.  The great scheme of liberation built up through nearly three years of elaborate conspiracy, and designed to be executed in defiance of law, by individual enterprise with pikes, rifles, forts, guerrilla war, prisoners, hostages, and plunder, was, after an experimental campaign of thirty-six hours, in utter collapse.  Of Brown’s total force of twenty-two men, ten were killed, five escaped, and seven were captured, tried, and hanged.  Of the townspeople, five had been killed and eight wounded.

[Illustration:  HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN BROWN WAS BORN, TORRINGTON, CONNECTICUT.]

  [Sidenote] Sanborn in the “Atlantic,” Dec. 1875. p. 718.

While John Brown’s ability for military leadership was too insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage compelled the admiration of his enemies.  Arraigned before a Virginia court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason, conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the trembling culprit.  He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude.  Eight years before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave law:  “Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery.  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 sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population.”  Even now, when mere Quixotic knight-errantry and his own positive violation