A roar of jeers and taunts and insults hailed the head of the marching column. Tom was startled by it. He turned to his father. The two were walking side by side, in the center of the column, between two companies of the militia. He found his father had already turned to him.
"Keep close to me, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
The storm of words that beat upon them increased. At the next corner, stones took the place of words. The mob surged alongside the soldiers, swearing, stoning, striking, finally stabbing and shooting. The Sixth Massachusetts showed admirable self-restraint, which the "plug-uglies" thought was cowardice. They pressed closer. With a mighty rush, five thousand rioters broke the line of the thousand troops. The latter were forced into small groups, many of them without an officer. Each group had to act for itself. Tom and his father found themselves part of a tiny force of about twenty men, beset upon every side by desperadoes now mad with liquor and with the lust of killing. Jack Saltonstall took command by common consent. Calmly he faced hundreds of rioters.
"Forward, march!"
As he uttered the words, he pitched forward, shot through the chest. A giant "plug-ugly" bellowed with triumph over his successful shot, yelled "kill 'em all!" and led the mob upon them. But Mr. Strong had snatched Saltonstall's gun as it fell from his nerveless hands, had leveled and aimed it, and had shouted "fire!" to willing ears. A score of guns rang out. The mob-leader whirled about and dropped. Half-a-dozen other "plug-uglies" lay about him. This section of the mob broke and ran. Some of them fired as they ran, and Jim Casey's life went out of him.
"Take this gun, Tom," said Mr. Strong.
The boy took it, reloading it as he marched, while his sturdy father lifted the wounded Saltonstall from the stony street and staggered forward with the body in his arms. Casey and two other men were dead. Their bodies had to be left to the fury of the mob. Saltonstall lived to fight to the end. As the survivors of the twenty pressed forward, the mob behind followed them up. Bullets whizzed unpleasantly near. Twice, at Mr. Strong's command, the men faced about and fired a volley. In both these volleys, Tom's gun played its part. He had hunted before, but never such big game as men. The joy of battle possessed him. Since it was apparently a case of "kill or be killed," he shot to kill. Whether he did kill, he never knew. The two volleys checked two threatening rushes of the rioters and enabled Mr. Strong to bring what was left of the gallant little band safely to the railroad station. An hour later the Sixth Massachusetts was in Washington. During that hour Tom had been violently sick upon the train. He was new to this trade of man-killing.
At Washington, once vacant spaces were soon filled with camps. Soldiers poured in on every train. Orderlies were galloping about. Artillery surrounded the Capitol. And from its dome Tom saw a Confederate flag, the Stars-and-Bars, flying defiantly in nearby Alexandria.
Those were dark days. There were Confederate forces within a few miles of the White House. Sumter surrendered April 15th. Virginia seceded on the 17th. Harper's Ferry fell into Southern hands on the 18th. The Sixth Massachusetts had fought its way through Baltimore on the 19th. Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in our army on the 20th and left Arlington for Richmond, taking with him a long train of army and navy officers whose loyal support, now lost forever, had seemed a national necessity. Lincoln spent many an hour in his private office, searching with a telescope the reaches of the Potomac, over which the troop-laden transports were expected. Once, when he thought he was alone, John Hay heard him call out "with irrepressible anguish": "Why don't they come? Why don't they come?" In public he gave no sign of the anxiety that was eating up his heart. He had the nerve to jest about it. The Sixth Massachusetts, the Seventh New York, and a Rhode Island detachment had all hurried to save Washington from the capture that threatened. When the Massachusetts men won the race and marched proudly by the White House, Lincoln said to some of their officers: "I begin to believe there is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another. You are the only real thing." They were very real, those men of Massachusetts, and they were the vanguard of the real army that was to be.