Mountain Boy" threatened Wise with assassination if Brown was executed, and there was an unfunded project to kidnap Wise and sequester him at sea, on a boat, until Brown was released. One option Wise considered was to find Brown insane, which would have avoided the death penalty and sent him to an insane asylum. He had been given 19 affidavits from relatives and friends about the alleged madness of Brown and several of his relatives. This would have de-escalated the crisis, not turning Brown into abolition's martyr and hero, as he immediately became. However, after his interview with Brown in the engine house, Wise had said publicly that Brown was not insane at all. Before the trial, Brown had insisted that he did not want an insanity defense. The prevailing political sentiment in Virginia was against de-escalation and strongly in favor of executing Brown. Wise was emerging as a national figure and had presidential ambitions. To take any action that would have prevented Brown's execution would have damaged Wise politically more than it could have helped him. On the contrary, the popularity Wise gained in the South for executing Brown, and the other captured members of his party led to Southern support for him as a presidential candidate in 1860. Advertisements promoting Wise as a presidential candidate started to appear immediately after Brown's execution. John Brown's body had to pass through Philadelphia on the way to his burial site at the John Brown Farm, near Lake Placid, New York. As this provoked indignation among the many Southern medical students studying there, Wise sent them a telegram, assuring them of a hearty welcome if they came to Richmond or other Southern cities to complete their education. So many accepted that there was a special train to take two hundred of them from Philadelphia to Richmond, where they were addressed by Wise and enjoyed an elegant banquet. Secession crisis In 1857, during the incoming Presidency of James Buchanan, Wise served as one of Buchanan's chief Southern advisors. Other Southern advisors to Buchanan included Senator John Slidell of Louisiana and Robert Tyler of Virginia. Tyler was the son of President John Tyler. Buchanan, although a Pennsylvania Democrat, held Southern sympathies, was a strict constructionist and detested abolitionists and "Black Republicans". During the secession crisis of 1860–61, Wise was a fervent advocate of immediate secession by Virginia. He was a member of the Virginia