"The train that left Harper's Ferry carried a panic to Virginia, Maryland and Washington with it. The passengers, taking all the paper they could find, wrote accounts of the insurrection, which they threw from the windows as the train rushed onward."[1]
A local physician says: "I went back to the hillside then, and tried to get the citizens together, to see what we could do to get rid of these fellows. They seemed to be very troublesome. When I got on the hill I learned that they had shot Boerly. That was probably about seven o'clock. . . . I had ordered the Lutheran church bell to be rung to get the citizens together to see what sort of arms they had. I found one or two squirrel rifles and a few shotguns. I had sent a messenger to Charlestown in the meantime for Captain Rowan, commander of a volunteer company there. I also sent messengers to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to stop the trains coming east, and not let them approach the Ferry, and also a messenger to Shepherdstown."[2]
Another eye-witness adds: "There was unavoidable delay in the preparations for a fight, because of the scarcity of weapons; for only a few squirrel guns and fowling-pieces could be found. There were then at Harper's Ferry thousands and tens of thousands of muskets and rifles of the most
