One half of these office holders were incompetent and insolent negroes. The Chief of Police was an ignoramus in league with criminals, and their Mayor, a white demagogue elected by pandering to the lowest passions of a negro constituency.
Burglary and highway robbery were almost daily occurrences. The two largest stores in the city and four residences had been burned within a month. Appeal to the police became a farce, and it was necessary to hire and arm a force of private guards to patrol the city at night. When arrests were made, the servile authorities promptly released the criminals. Negro insolence reached a height that made it impossible for ladies to walk the streets without an armed escort, and white children were waylaid and beaten on their way to the public schools.
The incendiary organ of the negroes, a newspaper that had been noted for its virulent spirit of race hatred, had published an editorial defaming the virtue of the white women of the community.
At eleven o’clock the quaint old hall, built in Revolutionary days to seat five hundred people, was packed with a crowd of eight hundred stern-visaged men standing so thick it was impossible to pass through them and thousands were massed outside around the building.
Gaston, whose ancestors had been leaders in the great Revolution, was called to the chair. The speech-making was brief, fiery, and to the point.
Within one hour they unanimously adopted this resolution:
“Resolved, that we issue a second Declaration of Independence from the infamy of corrupt and degraded government. The day of Negro domination over the Anglo-Saxon race shall close, now, once and forever. The government of North Carolina was established by a race of pioneer white freemen for white men and it shall remain in the hands of freemen.
“We demand the overthrow of the criminal and semi-barbarian régime under which we now live, and to this end serve notice on the present Mayor of this city, its Chief of Police, and the six negro aldermen and their low white associates that their resignations are expected by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. We demand that the negro anarchist who edits a paper in this city shall close his office, remove its fixtures and leave this county within twenty-four hours.”
A committee of twenty-five, with Gaston as its Chairman, was appointed to enforce these resolutions.
By four o’clock an army of two thousand white men was organised, and placed under the command of the Rev. Duncan McDonald, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of the city, who had been a brave young officer in the Confederate army. Every minister in the county was enrolled in this guard and carried a musket on picket duty, or in a reserve camp that night.