The horses trembled in their stalls.

Sambo took refuge in Colonel's manger and would not come out.
There were many emigrants on their way to the far West in the crowd--men, women and children and babies in arms--Irish, English, Germans and Yankees.

There were also well dressed, handsome young men from the colleges of New England going out to be missionaries "between the desert and the sown." Buffalo, on the edge of the midland seas, had the flavor of the rank, new soil in it those days--and especially that day, when it was thronged with rough coated and rougher tongued, swearing men on a holiday, stevedores and boatmen off the lakes and rivers of the middle border--some of whom had had their training on the Ohio and Mississippi.

There was much drunkenness and fighting in the crowded streets.

Some of the carriers and handlers of American commerce vented their enthusiasm in song.
In Samson's diary was the refrain of one of these old lake songs, which he had set down, as best he could, after the event: "Then here's three cheers for the skipper an' his crew, Give 'er the wind an' let 'er go, for the boys'll put 'er through; I thought 'twould blow the whiskers right off o' you an' me, On our passage up from Buffalo to Milwaukee-ee." Each of these rough men had dressed to his own fancy.