A tough from the East Side waved his hand to the crowd of frenzied men and women:
"Come on, boys,——"
With a single mighty impulse the mob surged toward the doors, and through them. A sound of smashing glass, blows, curses. A man rushed into the street holding the enrollment books above his head:
"Here are your names, men—the list of white slaves!"
The mob tore the sheets from his grasp and fell on them like hungry wolves. In ten minutes the books were only scraps of paper trampled into the filth of Third Avenue. Wherever a piece could be seen men and women stamped and spit on it.
They smashed the wheel and furniture into kindling wood, piled it in the middle of the room and set fire to it. No policemen or firemen were allowed to approach. Every officer of the law, both civil and military, had been chased and beaten and disappeared.
Half the block was in flames before the firemen could break through and reach the burning buildings.
Down the Avenue, the maddened mob swept with resistless impulse, jelling, cursing, shouting its defiance.
"Down with the Abolitionists!"
"Hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple tree!"