The jubilation reached the level of spectacle when the train passed through Goldsboro, North Carolina, the first significant town Russell had come to since leaving Portsmouth that morning. “The station, the hotels, the street through which the rail ran was filled with an excited mob all carrying arms, with signs here and there of a desire to get up some kind of uniform—flushed faces, wild eyes, screaming mouths, hurrahing for ‘Jeff Davis’ and ‘the Southern Confederacy,’ so that the yells overpowered the discordant bands which were busy with ‘Dixie’s Land.’ ” Russell believed that these
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