Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Oct. 1, 2001 issue of Fortune.
They started hauling the bodies out about 36 hours after the attack. A day and a half to let the fires burn, to sift through the rubble and ash that was once the citadel of American capitalism and was now the first battlefield of a new century’s first war, just to begin the dreadful accounting, to begin clearing the dead off that battlefield. During those same 36 hours, the reaction nationwide to the most lethal attack ever directed at U.S. soil slowly began to turn, from speechless, stunned terror toward anger, toward thoughts of revenge, toward a call to war.
