But John Brown had seized the government's arsenal, and put arms in the hands of negro slaves, and therefore the law must take its course with him. Its officers came to him where he lay on the floor of his fort, a badly-wounded man, who had fought for fifty-five long hours, who had seen two sons and eight of his comrades shot in the battle, and who felt that his cause was lost. When men who owned slaves asked the reason for his raid, he answered, "You are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage.... I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit." A number of Virginians had been killed in the fight, and it was difficult to secure a fair trial for the raiders. The state did its best to hold the scales of justice even. The formal trial began on October 27, 1859. Friends from the North came to his aid, and a Massachusetts lawyer acted as his counsel. John Brown heard the charges against him lying on a straw pallet, and four days later he heard the jury declare him guilty of treason. December 2, 1859, the sentence of the court was carried out, and John Brown was hanged as a traitor. His last written words were, "I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." Every great cause in history has its martyrs, and John Brown was one of those who were sacrificed in the battle for human freedom. Statesmen had tried for years to argue away the wrongs that began when the first African bondsmen were brought to the American colonies. Statesmen, however, cannot change the views of men and women as to what is right and wrong, and all the arguments in the world could not convince such men as John Brown and his friends that one man had a right to the possession of a fellow-creature. He struck his blow wildly, but its echo rang in the ears of the North, and never ceased until the Civil War was ended, and slavery wiped off the continent. The great negro orator, Frederick Douglass, said twenty-two years later at Harper's Ferry, "If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harper's Ferry and the arsenal, not Major Anderson, but John Brown began the war that ended American slavery, and made this a free republic.... When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared,--the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms was at hand."