The men who enlisted in the Confederate army from Howell and adjoining counties, before starting, went to the blacksmith shops and had them large butcher knives made; made a belt and scabbard and buckled them around them, and said that they were going to scalp lopeared Dutch. In a short time the tenor of the above mentioned speech had incited over 400 men and it had become necessary to double the guard. The grove of timber was filled with men and boys looking over, expecting to see the prisoners mobbed every minute. There was a man who drew his pistol, others drew knives and made different attempts to break lines and mob the prisoners. The man in possession of the pistol declared that he intended to shoot them. He was on an elevated place and they called him "Red," and there were three or four men holding him to prevent his firing. The author remarked to him that: "The time will soon come when you will meet men who are not disarmed. You had better save your bravery until you meet them, and my opinion is that you won't need any man to hold you then." Just about this time on the north side of the spring--the land dropped toward the spring, on a descent of about 45 degrees--the author heard the voice of a man ordering the guard to "open the lines and let these ladies come in." The author at once arose to his feet and spoke out in an audible voice to the guard to give away and let the ladies come in and see a Northern monkey exhibited, that the monkeys grew a great deal larger in the north than they did in the south. At this juncture it appeared to take one more man to hold Red who said that "he would kill the saucy scoundrel if it took him a week to do it." When the posse came in we saw that the ladies were accompanied by eight or ten Confederate officers with about fifteen ladies. All the ladies carried small Confederate flags, the first ones that the author had ever seen. On coming very close to the prisoners they halted and one of the officers remarked, "These are the Union men that are friends to the lopeared Dutch. Couldn't you tie the knot upon them to hang them?" I think almost everyone spoke out and said "we could." After heaping other epithets and abuse upon the prisoners they and the officers retired outside of the line. The speaker was still talking, urging and insisting that the prisoners should be mobbed at once, that they should not be permitted to live.