The raid was so poorly organized that it looked like a planned martyrdom. Brown never made it out of Harpers Ferry, nor did he even appear to have a plan for escaping, let alone arming hundreds of thousands of slaves. His raiding party managed to kill seven townspeople and wound ten others. Then a group of eighty-six US marines under army colonel Robert E. Lee arrived from Washington, stormed the building where Brown and his men were barricaded, and put a fast and violent end to Brown’s gambit.
