JOHN COOK AND EDWIN COPPOC went to the gallows on the afternoon of December 16, 1859, only a few hours after the execution of John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green. Coppoc's last known words regretted the “parting from friends, not the dread of death.” Cook was more expressive, perhaps to make amends for his earlier betrayal. He denounced slavery as a sin and predicted that it “would be abolished in Virginia in less than ten years.” The trials of Aaron Stevens and Albert Hazlett were delayed until the following spring. Both men were convicted and sentenced to death. They were hanged on March 16, 1860.

Five of the Harper's Ferry raiders escaped to the North: Owen Brown, Charles Tidd, Barclay Coppoc, Francis Merriam, and Osborne Perry Anderson. Tidd headed for Boston, where he met with Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He later enlisted in the Union Army, dying of disease in 1862, on the eve of the Battle of Roanoke Island. Barclay Coppoc returned to Iowa. His extradition was sought by the Virginia authorities, but Iowa's Republican governor refused to comply. He, too, enlisted in the Union Army, dying in 1861 when his troop train was derailed in Missouri by Confederate saboteurs. Francis Merriam served in the Civil War as a captain of the Third South Carolina Colored Infantry. He survived the war, despite being wounded in combat, and succumbed to illness in late 1865. Owen Brown lived until 1889, spending most of his life as a recluse. He gave occasional interviews, in which he defended his father's life and principles.

Osborne Perry Anderson was the only black man to survive service in John Brown's army. He escaped on foot from Virginia, eventually reaching his home in Chatham, where he set to work on a short book recounting his experience at Harper's Ferry. Anderson's memoir – titled A Voice from Harper's Ferry – was published in 1861.