We gathered on the state house grounds. I went into the governor’s office and requested him politely to come out, as there were a lot of Virginia’s first families giving a lawn party outside, and they wanted him to talk to them. I could see that he wanted to come out but that he was timid.
“Mother,” he said, “I can’t come with you but I am not as bad as you may think.”
“Come,” I said, pulling him by his coattails.
He shook his head. He looked like a scared child and I felt sorry for him; a man without the courage of his emotions; a good, weak man who could not measure up to a position that took great strength of mind, a character of granite.
From a platform on the statehouse steps I read a document that we had drawn up, requesting the governor to do away with the murderous Baldwin Felts guards and gunmen. We asked him to re-establish America and American traditions in West Virginia. I called a committee to take the document into the statehouse and place it reverently on the governor’s table. I then spoke to the crowd and in conclusion said, “Go home now. Keep away from the saloons. Save your money. You’re going to need it.”
“What will we need it for, Mother?” some one shouted.
“For guns,” said I. “Go home and read the immortal Washington’s words to the colonists.”
He told those who were struggling for liberty against those who would not heed or hear “to buy guns.”
They left the meeting peacefully and bought every gun in the hardware stores of Charleston. They took down the old hammerlocks from their cabin walls. Like the Minute Men of New England, they marched up the creeks to their homes with the grimness of the soldiers of the revolution.