Right from the beginning of the commemoration, there were calls—sometimes anxious ones—for local authorities to close the saloons. Some of the veterans were imbibing to excess, it was claimed. The truth of this was revealed at the Gettysburg Hotel on the second night of the commemoration, when seven men—most of them veterans—received nasty knife wounds. The trouble began when an old veteran heard disparaging words about President Lincoln. He rose to challenge the man who spoke, and a whole row of men—some his friends and others unknown to him—rose to fight. The knives came out in an instant, the New York Times declared, and the stab wounds were serious. Of the seven men injured that evening, one was a local man, and another was from Harrisburg. The others had come from far off.