the soldiers of the 29th regiment at least, to
commit some extraordinary act of violence upon
the town ; that if the inhabitants attempted to
repel it by firing even one gun upon those sol-
diers, the 14th regiment were ordered to be in
readiness to assist them ; and that on the late
butchery in
King-street they actually were ready
for that purpose, had a single gun been fired on
the perpetrators of it.
It appears by a variety of depositions, that on
the same evening between the hours of six and
half after nine (at which time the firing began)
many persons, without the least provocation, were
in various parts of the town, insulted and abused
by parties of armed soldiers patrolling the streets :
particularly --
Mr. Robert Pierpont declares, that between the
hours of 7 & 8 in the same evening, 3 armed soldiers
passing him, one of them who had a bayonet gave
him a back-handed stroke with it, on complaint
of this treatment he said the deponent should
soon hear more of it, and threatened him very hard.
Mr. Henry Bass declares, that at 9 o'clock a
party of soldiers came out of Draper's alley lead-
ing to and from Murray's barracks, and they
being armed with large naked cutlasses, made at
every body coming in their way, cutting and
slashing, and that he himself very narrowly es-
caped receiving a cut from the foremost of them,
who pursued him.
Samuel Atwood, declares, that 10 or 12 sol-
diers armed with drawn cutlasses, bolted out of