One worker glanced at the armed white men assembled on the street and asked Rountree: “What have we done? What have we done?” Rountree did not respond. “I had no answer,” he wrote later. “They had done nothing.” Even so, Rountree feared that the workers would go home and arm themselves with whatever guns they could muster. He found a telephone and called the armory, directing the Wilmington Light Infantry to haul its Colt rapid-fire gun to the compress “to have it convenient for use if necessary.” Rountree regretted the call almost immediately. He realized he had brought into play a murderous
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