 Brown refused to be rescued by Silas Soule, a friend from Kansas who somehow infiltrated the Jefferson County Jail one day and offered to break him out during the night and flee northward to New York state and possibly Canada.Brown supposedly told Silas that, aged 59, he was too old to live a life on the run from the federal authorities as a fugitive and that he was ready to die as a martyr.Silas left him behind to be executed.