The Light Infantry advanced up Bladen Street, bayonets fixed, firing as they went. When J. Allan Taylor spotted two Negro women attempting to remove the corpse of their brother, he ordered, “Make them leave the bodies in the street—as a lesson.” Soldiers hustled the women away at bayonet point.

All along Bladen Street—on the stoop of Walker’s Grocery, in the streets and alleys of Brooklyn—lay the bodies of black men and boys, cooling in the sun, stiffening into unnatural shapes.

Walker Taylor was busy rounding up his State Guard volunteers by telephone from Brunjes Grocery & Saloon. Within fifteen minutes, he assembled a sizable contingent. He stationed them on street corners with orders to detain and search all Negroes. He was nominally in command of the military district of Wilmington, but he couldn’t control Bowling’s Red Shirts or Roger Moore’s vigilantes, which answered to Hugh MacRae. And he couldn’t control the Naval Reserves or the Light Infantry, because his orders were being flouted by his own brother.

It was a hell of a mess. He would have to rein it in, street corner by street corner. He would do what he could to keep order. Without order, there was just a mob of scared people—the most dangerous kind.

Hugh MacRae was breathless with excitement, yet at the same time, he had never felt so cool-headed and alive. He stayed with J. Allan Taylor and the Light Infantry as they cleared the neighborhood. He fired and reloaded his own pistol so many times he lost count.

Somewhere along the line of march, Sam Jenks caught up with his cousin. He kept himself in the middle of the square, scribbling notes as he walked. “Keep your head down,” MacRae said. “I don’t want to be explaining to your pretty wife.”

“Can’t write it if I don’t see it.”

“Then take a good look. This is what history looks like.”

A vigilante joined them. “Word is, they know who shot Bill Mayo,” he said to J. Allan Taylor.

“They got him?” Taylor said.

“No, sir. But I know where the boy lives. Laborer, name of Dan Wright. Missing the thumb on his right hand.” He splayed his right hand and crooked the thumb to illustrate.

MacRae said, “Take a flying squad over there. I’ll stay with the boys.”

J. Allan Taylor took a sergeant and fifteen men to Wright’s home, two blocks over. Sam tagged along. Using rifle butts, they burst through the door and pointed their guns at Wright and his wife. Then they ransacked the house and found a Winchester .44 leaning in a bedroom corner. Taylor sniffed the muzzle—it had been fired recently. He worked the lever, and a spent shell ejected onto the pine floor. Taylor picked up the shell.

“I shot into the air,” Wright explained. “Then I got scared.”