Wide Awakes defended the speakers, and a general melee resulted, involving several hundred men. After the rally, the Wide Awakes returned through Payson, where they found a hundred Democrats guarding their pole. Although Wide Awakes avoided confrontation, shots were fired at them while they left town. The Wide Awakes' flag was pierced by shots, and several were reported to have been injured. Southern reaction In 1860, Texas Senator Louis T. Wigfall alleged that Wide Awakes were behind a wave of arson and vandalism in his home state of Texas. Historians Who? have reported that in Texas in 1860, a statewide hysteria over purported slave revolts led to the lynching of 30 to 100 slaves and whites in the so-called Texas Troubles. The Wide Awakes never marched anywhere in the South in 1860 Citation needed, but they represented the region’s minority of slave and land owners’ greatest fear: an oppressive force bent on marching down, liberating the slaves, stealing their land, and pushing aside their way of life. Their outfits and equipment only further incited that fear with beliefs that "they parade at midnight, carry rails to break open our doors, torches to fire our dwellings, and beneath their long black capes, the knife to cut our throats." To the South, the Wide Awakes were only a taste of what was to come if Lincoln were to be elected. The North would not compromise and could force themselves upon the South. "One–half million of men uniformed and drilled, and the purpose of their organization to sweep the country in which I live with fire and sword." That mindset was not appeased by the wide acceptance of the Wide Awakes in the North. On October 25, 1858, Senator Seward of New York stated to an excited crowd that "a revolution has begun" and alluded to Wide Awakes as "forces with which to recover back again all the fields... and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the constitution and freedom forever." To the South, the Wide Awakes and the North would be content only when the South was fully dominated. The South recognized the need for their own Wide Awakes and thus started a movement to create "a counteracting organization in the South," dubbed the "Minutemen." The South viewed the Wide Awakes as the North's private army and determined on creating their own. It would no longer entertain