News of the raid spread quickly across the country. Southerners were furious and fearful. They worried that slave insurrections might be right around the corner. Many northerners, such as Abraham Lincoln, spoke out against John Brown’s extreme actions. Others in the north, however, felt that he was justified. Slavery was a violent institution, and perhaps violent means would be necessary to finally terret down. Some saw John Brown as a martyr for the abolitionist movement. The hostility that had been building between North and South for more than a decade finally came to a boil.

John Brown was tried and received the death penalty for his crimes. He was hanged on December 2, 1859. Just before his death, he wrote a note in his jail cell predicting the Civil War. It read, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

Before his raid on Harpers Ferry. John Brown had several abolitionist to join him, including escape slave Frederick Douglass. Douglas declined, saying that it would make the south more hostile to the north. However, Douglas praised Brown after the raid saying that John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery.