The State Guard under Walker Taylor established a semblance of military order, methodically marching through Brooklyn, closing shops, ordering people off the streets. Before them scattered hundreds of Negroes—men, women, and children—fleeing the city. They took only what they could carry. They didn’t look back. With bundles of bedding on their heads or stuffed into cloth satchels, they headed for Oakdale Cemetery, for the swamps along Smith’s Creek, for anyplace they could lie low and wait for the mayhem to pass.

Meanwhile, the eighty men of the Light Infantry—now under command of Captain James—and the sixty Naval Reserves under Lieutenant George Morton raided Negro churches, where guns were rumored to be stockpiled. Where Manly was rumored to be hiding. Where armed squads of black assassins were rumored to be holed up. Where black secret fraternities were rumored to be torturing white prisoners.

Kenan’s crew hauled the Gatling gun to the door of each church and trained it there. Then flying squads rushed the building. They overturned benches, desecrated holy places, outraged ministers, terrified custodians—but they found nothing except one stockpile of campaign leaflets.

On Fifth Street a block from Colonel Waddell’s home, a Negro mailman was attacked by a crowd of white hooligans. They beat him unconscious and dumped out his leather mailbag in the street. The breeze scattered letters under the wheels of passing traffic. Gabrielle deRosset Waddell heard the commotion and rushed out to investigate. Discovering the mailman lying face down, she swabbed his bloody face with her handkerchief. Then she arranged a carriage to take him home.

All up and down her street, black servants were hiding out with their white employers.

Three blocks east of Colonel Waddell’s home, two members of the Wilmington Light Infantry, on detached patrol, cornered another Negro mailman. They held the muzzles of their Krag-Jorgensen rifles to his head and ordered him to kneel on the oyster shells. “Beg for your life,” they commanded. He did. They didn’t shoot him.

First Baptist Church, half a block south of the Waddell home, was receiving white women and children from all over the city. A cordon of fifty armed men surrounded the building. Food, water, and blankets were stockpiled inside. A doctor, a nurse, and a pharmacist stood by. In the basement, a squad of vigilantes guarded the entrance to the tunnel that gave safe access to the Light Infantry Armory, a block away. Couriers came and went through the tunnel.

At St. Thomas’s on Dock Street, three and a half blocks away, Negro parishioners were accumulating in the pews, waiting for Father Dennen. They knelt and prayed quietly, row upon row.