The mob soon found what we were after and thronged around us.

It has been estimated that a crowd of two thousand people at least surrounded Butman and his convoy.
I suppose he had no friend or defender among the number.

Most of them wanted to frighten him; some of them to injure him, though not to kill him.

There were a few angry negroes, I suppose, excited and maddened by their not unnatural or unjustifiable resentment against the fellow who had been the ready and notorious tool of the slave-catchers, who would have killed him if they could.

He was kicked several times by persons who succeeded in the swaying and surging of the crowd, in getting through his guard, and once knocked onto his knees by a heavy blow in the back of the neck which came from a powerful negro, who had a stone in his hand which increased the force of the blow.