From towns across the state, white men sent telegrams to the governor’s office or to Wilmington’s white newspapers, offering to help put down the purported black riot. “Hold your ground. Will carry hundred Winchesters if needed,” read a telegram from Rockingham, 130 miles northwest of Wilmington. Whites in Granville County, 170 miles north, offered to send five hundred armed men. Whites in Atlanta and New Orleans also promised armed assistance. And from Washington, DC, came a cryptic offer: “Can bring fifty Tar Heels and Winchesters; if need, wire.” In Fayetteville, the men of the Fayetteville
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