"Brown was the coolest and firmest man I ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm and sell their lives as dearly as they could." He wreaked no vengeance on his prisoners. Though his sons and friends were dead and dying around him, and himself, near the end of the fight, cleaved down with a sword, and bayonets were thrust in his body, he sheltered his prisoners so that not one of them was harmed. And non-combatants were not fired on by his band. When Brown's party in the _fort_ were reduced to himself and six men, two or more of these being wounded, Colonel Robert E. Lee, _then of the United States Army_, arrived with a company of marines. After Lee's demand to surrender was refused by Brown, an entrance was forced, and, bleeding, some dying, he and those left were taken. Of the nineteen, ten were killed, five taken prisoners, and four had succeeded in escaping, two of the four being afterwards captured in Pennsylvania. They had killed five and wounded nine of the inhabitants and of their besiegers. Not only was all the vicinity wildly excited, but the whole South was in an uproar. Slavery had been physically assaulted in its home. The North partook of the excitement, generally condemning the rash proceeding, though many deeply sympathized with the purpose of Brown's movement, and his heroic conduct and life caused many to admire him. He was a devout believer in the literal reading of the Holy Bible, and of the special judgments of God, as he interpreted them in the Old Testament. His attack on slavery he regarded as more rational than and as likely to triumph as Joshua's attack on a walled city with trumpets and shouts, and as Gideon's band of three hundred, armed only with trumpets, lamps, and pitchers in its encounter with a great army. As Jericho's walls had fallen, and Gideon's band had put to flight Midianites and Amalekites in countless multitudes like grasshoppers, so, Brown expected, at least fondly hoped and devoutly prayed, to see the myriads of human slaves go free in America. He did not, however, expect a general rising of the slaves. He did not seek to San Domingoize the South, and against this he provided penalties in his prepared provisional constitution.(99) Brown had been encouraged and materially aided by Gerritt Smith, Dr. Howe of Boston, Stearns, Sanborn, Frederick Douglass, Higginson, Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and others of less renown; some, if not all, of whom had neither understood nor approved of his plan of attack. The slaves did not rise, not did they in any considerable number even know at the time the real purpose of their would-be liberator. During the excitement of the first news Greeley prophetically wrote: