All who were supposed to have been any way connected with John Brown were to be hunted down and surrendered to the tender mercies of slaveholding and panic-stricken Virginia, and there to be tried after the fashion of John Brown’s trial, and of course to be summarily executed.
Douglass recounts the immediate and severe reaction to John Brown's raid, where anyone associated with him faced summary justice in Virginia.
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A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
I wished it was possible I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large the shorter would be my time to remain with them.
This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man.
Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty.