as from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. However, the manufacturer would refer the request back to their North Carolina state branch, which would then call the order in to the local Wilmington branch. Once the state branch learned from the local branch that the purchasers were black, the state branch would refuse to fill the order. Merchants sold no guns to blacks between November 1 and 10, but later testified that they sold over 400 guns to whites over the same period. The only weapons blacks had were a few old army muskets or pistols. Newspapers incited people into believing that confrontation was inevitable. Rumors began to spread that blacks were purchasing guns and ammunition, readying themselves for a confrontation. Whites began to suspect black leaders were conspiring in churches, making revolutionary speeches and pleading with the community to arm themselves with bullets, or to create torches from kerosene and stolen white cotton bales. Alderman Benjamin Keith wrote: The Political Director of The Washington Post, Henry L. West, went to Wilmington to cover the White Supremacy Campaign. He wrote: The Democrats hired two detectives to investigate the rumors, including one black detective. However, the detectives concluded that the black residents "were doing practically nothing". George Rountree would later write that two other black detectives claimed that black women agreed to set fire to their employers homes, and that black men threatened to burn Wilmington down if the white supremacists prevailed in the election. To prevent any black conspiring, the Democrats forbade blacks from congregating anywhere. Right before the election, the Red Shirts, supported by the White Government Union, were told that they wanted the Democrats to win the election "at all hazards and by any means necessary ... even if they had to shoot every negro in the city". The Red Shirts had so instituted a level of fear among the city's blacks that, approaching the election, they were "in a state of terror amounting almost to distress". The day before the election, Waddell excited a large crowd at Thalian Hall when he told them: 1898 election Most blacks and many Republicans did not vote in the November 8 election, hoping to avoid violence, as Red Shirts had blocked every road leading in and out of the city, and drove potential black voters away with gunfire. The Red Shirts were in line with Congressman W. W. Kitchin, who declared, "Before