[250] the Kennedy Farm and the school house; while the remainder were posted as guards at the bridges and at the corners of the streets and the public buildings. Early in the morning Captain Brown sent an order to the Wager House for breakfast for forty-five men his hostages and company. By eight o'clock the number of Virginians thus held was over sixty persons. The first firing after daybreak was by a person named Turner, who fired at the guards as they were ordering two citizens to halt. Mr. Boerley, a grocer, fired the second shot. A bullet from a Sharpe's rifle instantly killed him. A number of Virginians then obtained possession of a room overlooking the Armory gates, and fired at a party of the sentinels. One of the Liberators fell dead,and another — Watson Brown -retired mortally wounded. The panic that these proceedings caused in the town is thus described by a Virginia panegyrist of the people:
As the sun rose upon the scene, the reported outrages and the bodies of the murdered men showed that, from whatever source the movement came, it was of a serious nature. Sentinels, armed with rifles and pistols, were seen guarding all the public buildings, threatening death or firing at all who questioned or interfered with them; and the savage audacity with which they issued their orders gave assurance that the buildings were occupied by large bodies of men. Messages were despatched to all the neighboring towns for military assistance, while panic-stricken citizens seized such arms as they could find, and gathered in small bodies on the outskirts of the town, and at points remote from the works. All was confusion and mystery. Even the sight of several armed negroes among the strangers did not at once excite suspicion that it was an anti-slavery movement, and the report of one of the captured slaves, confirmatory of that fact, was received with doubt and incredulity. Indeed, so averse was the public mind to the acceptance of this belief, that the suggestion was every where received with derision, and every and any other explanation adopted in preference. Some supposed it was a strike among the discontented armorers, or the laborers on a government dam, who had taken this means to obtain redress for real or imaginary grievances.
