This proposition startled the young soldiers. If they agreed to it they would be powerless to defend themselves, and what assurance had they that the strikers would not wreak vengeance upon them? Nothing but the word of half a dozen men who could not have controlled the turbulent ones among their followers, even if they had been disposed to try. But fortunately Mr. Kellogg was not the man they took him for. As soon as the yells of approval had subsided so that he could make himself heard, his answer came clear and distinct;
“I shall not disarm my men; you may depend upon that.”
“Let’s run ’em back to Bridgeport, where they belong,” shouted a striker.
“That’s the idea,” shouted the mob. “We don’t want ’em here. Run ’em back where they came from. We can easy find an engine.”
“I am not going back,” replied the undaunted professor. “I was ordered to come here, and now that I got here, I am going to stay.”
“Well, you shan’t stay with these guns in your hands,” said the shrill-voiced man. “All of us who are in favor of disarming them say ‘I.’”
“I! I!” was the almost unanimous response.
If there were any present who were opposed to disarming the boys, they were not given an opportunity to say so. Encouraged by their overwhelming numbers, and by the fact that the mass of the soldiers were mere striplings to be strangled with a finger and thumb, the rioters went to work to secure the muskets, and then there was a scene to which no pen could do justice.
The fight, if such it could be called, was a most unequal one. That portion of the mob which had possession of the car, was composed almost entirely of rolling-mill hands, and not of “lazy, ragged tramps and boys,” as a Hamilton paper afterward declared. They were powerful men, and the young soldiers were like infants in their grasp. But, taken at every disadvantage as they were, the most of the boys gave a good account of themselves. A few, terrified by the sight of the revolvers and knives that were flourished before their eyes, surrendered their weapons on demand, and even allowed their cartridge-boxes to be cut from their persons; but the others fought firmly to retain possession of their guns, and gave them up only when they were torn from their grasp. Among the latter was Don Gordon.
When the proposition to disarm the boys was put and carried, the man who was standing in Don’s seat, and who had caught him when he came so near losing his balance, faced about, seized the boy’s musket, and, in spite of all Don could do to prevent it, forced it over toward his friends in the aisle. A dozen hands quickly laid hold of it, but Don would not give it up. He held to it with all his strength, until one of the mob, enraged at his determined resistance, gave a sudden jerk, pulling the weapon out of his hands and compelling Don to turn a somerset over the back of his seat.