The suggestion, however,
was not carried into effect; for we had scarcely finished tea ere they
(the mob) were down upon us like wild beasts out of a den.
We first observed some twenty men turning a corner in the direction of
the house; then about thirty or forty more, and soon the streets were
filled with men--some four or five hundred. In the rear of this
multitude there was driven a sleigh in which, we rightly conjectured,
Miss King was to be taken home.
From the statements of the leader of the mob--statements afterwards
given to the public--it seems that a Committee, composed of members of
the mob, and constituted by the mob, suggested before reaching the house
that if we were still unmarried there should be no violence done, as
they intended to carry off the lady. A portion of this Committee also
made it their duty to gain access to the apartment where our company
were sitting, and to inform us of the intentions of the assembled
multitude below, while the remainder of the Committee endeavoured by
speeches and reasoning to quiet the mob spirit, which soon after the
assembling, began to reach its climax.
This Committee was composed of some of the most "respectable" men of
Fulton--lawyers, merchants, and others of like position. The reader will
doubtless think it strange that such men should be members of a mob; and
so it would be, if prejudice against color were not the saddest of all
comments upon the meanness of human depravity.
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