Canterbury “was overtaken by the attention he was getting from the press,” concluded McManus looking back. “The mixture was there to make him a hero,” to make a desk general think “it was his moment of glory” as a field commander. Canterbury later told the FBI that the assembled students “seemed much more hostile than the crowd [on] Saturday night.” They “seemed to consist primarily of extremely vociferous agitators.” Several of Canterbury’s officers and guardsmen contradicted his assessment.
