But the excitement that was created in the city by the capture of Frost and his brigade is indescribable. Throngs gathered on all the principal thoroughfares. On Fourth Street, then the centre of the retail trade of the city, crowds moved to and fro eager for news. They bore banners of various and diverse devices. One band of men as they pushed excitedly along cheered, another going in the opposite direction answered the cheer by a groan. Distinguished and influential citizens addressed an excited multitude in front of the Planters’ Hotel, endeavoring to allay their seething passions. At different places in the city men were speaking to impromptu audiences, in which some were cheering while others were yelling defiance, to bring them if possible to calmness and reason. In different directions a shot could now and then be heard. As soon as it was dark, from fear of riot, the saloons and restaurants were closed and their doors were bolted and barred. The windows of many private houses were also shut and securely fastened. The theatres and all places of public amusement were empty. The police were on the alert, but were taxed to the utmost to nip in the bud any show of disorder. In spite of their vigilance and efficiency a crowd made a charge on Dimick’s gun-store on Main Street, broke open the door and secured fifteen or twenty guns, when the gathering mob was dispersed by about twenty policemen armed with muskets. But as the night wore on the excitement abated; men by degrees sought their homes and their beds; some in quietude to rejoice over the brightening prospects of Unionism, others to mourn over the fading hopes of secession. When morning dawned, the prisoners at the Arsenal viewed more favorably the conditions on which the day before parole had been offered them. All but one now took the prescribed oath of allegiance to the United States, and, thereupon being paroled, left for their homes, where they were joyfully greeted and sat down to well-loaded tables. The plucky one, however, persisting for a time in his refusal to subscribe to the oath, remained in durance vile. But many of those who were paroled openly declared that they did not intend to abide by their oaths, excusing their purposed perjury on the specious plea that an oath taken under compulsion is not binding. This disregard of the oath of allegiance stirred up all good men in our city to consider its sanctity and to protest against its wanton violation. Still, most of those captured at Camp Jackson, in spite of the fact that they were paroled because they deliberately swore that they would not take up arms against the United States, enlisted sooner or later in the army of the Southern Confederacy.