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“Brown’s northern supporters are another matter.
If I remember correctly, they were not known at the time, and when they finally were exposed fled the US to avoid prosecution.”

That’s true. There were six of them and some did flee when newspapers began to link them to Brown. But exile was temporary except for one who died in Europe in 1860.

The ‘Secret Six’ were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. Unitarian ministers, authors, industrialists, social reformers, heirs to great fortune. They were wealthy and prominent men. The rich liberal elite of Massachusetts in the 19th Century.

Pelham: "They were wealthy and prominent men.
The rich liberal elite of Massachusetts in the 19th Century."

John Brown's 21 raiders at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, murdered three white civilians, one slave and two US marines -- six all told.
Ten of Browns men were killed, while Brown and six others were captured and hanged.
Only five escaped.
Brown's "wealthy and prominent" northern supporters were eventually exposed, forced to seek refuge out of country, or in one case, in an insane asylum.

But remember: Brown had already left "Bleeding Kansas" three years earlier -- in October 1856, and so Brown was not in Kansas to battle pro-slavery forces (about 30 men) lead by Charles Hamilton from Georgia in May 1858.
Near Trading Post, Kansas, they captured eleven unarmed anti-slavery civilians -- and at the Marais des Cygnes Massacre murdered five of them.

None of the pro-slavery raiders -- or their wealthy and prominent slave-holding supporters in the South -- were arrested at the time.
The murdering pro-slavery leader, Charles Hamilton, returned to his home state of Georgia, where he died, presumably of natural causes, in 1880.

So it seems, where Brown and Hamilton committed similar crimes, justice was far kinder to Hamilton than to Brown.

In short: John Brown, Charles Hamilton and others were simply two sides of the same coin.
None of those outlaws should have been allowed by voters or elected officials to dictate national policies regarding expansion or restrictions on slavery, much less more important questions like union or secession.