Hugh MacRae stood momentarily paralyzed. It was too late to stop Waddell. He had picked his moment with perfection, had outflanked him again. Colonel Moore, Walker Taylor, Tom James, even his own brother Donald—all had failed him at the crucial moment. He swore a string of oaths.

J. Allan Taylor grabbed MacRae’s arm and led him around back to their stabled horses. “Come on, Hugh—we can catch ahold of this thing yet.”

Sam Jenks sprinted down the steps and followed the mob.

On the bone-white marble steps of the armory, Captain James watched them go. When the infantrymen formed up in ranks and started marching out of the yard, he leaped off the steps to stop them. “If you follow that mob, leave your tunics here!” he shouted. The men milled about uncertainly.

Lieutenant White, the drillmaster, who wore wire-rimmed spectacles and styled himself after Colonel Roosevelt, said to Donald MacRae, “Captain, are we not to do our part?”

“I’m in command here,” Captain James said. “If the city is threatened, we will move to keep the peace.”

Donald MacRae swore, threw up a helpless hand, and retired inside the building.

The men remained standing in ranks, muttering. The tail of the mob was almost out of sight now, and a group of men and boys who had arrived late were sprinting through the pall of lime dust to catch up to it.

“At ease,” Captain James said. “Stack your weapons. Go on about your business. But don’t leave the compound.”

The men shifted from foot to foot, talked briefly among themselves, swatted their gray, white-plumed hats against their thighs, and, with an exaggerated air of disappointment, began falling out. There were coffee and biscuits inside—they could smell the wood smoke from the old iron cookstove in the basement club rooms.

Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell walked his horse so that the men behind him could keep up. Mounted Red Shirts took up positions as outriders, Winchesters cocked on thighs. By the time Waddell reached the turn onto Seventh, the mob stretched two blocks behind him, all the way back to the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory.

Waddell made the turn onto Seventh Street with five hundred men trailing him. MacRae rode somewhere behind him—he didn’t look back to see. An army could have only one leader. Mike Dowling jogged along the flank on his skittish sorrel, his red shirt freshly laundered for the occasion. Among the marchers on foot were Solomon Fishblate and the Reverend Peyton Hoge, both carrying Winchesters.

From out of nowhere appeared Father Dennen, waving his arms to stop them. “For the love of Jesus, boys, you can’t do this!” he shouted. “You can’t do this!”