Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
History
Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878
Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
abandoned, and the troops needed rest and food.
The crowd had come together again gradually, in the vicinity of the
Twenty-eighth street crossing, but whenever the troops made any move
towards them, they would scatter, and when the troops marched into the
lower round house and machine shop, the mob took possession of, and had
full sway again at the crossing. General Pearson had ordered the
Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments to go down and take possession of
the transfer depot as it was called, about two hundred yards below the
lower round house, and these regiments marched down there about the
time that General Brinton's command went into the round house and
machine shop. Colonel Gray, at request of Colonel Howard, assumed
command at the transfer depot, and held possession until about ten
P.M., when General Brown came and told Colonel Gray that the place was
untenable, and could not be held; that he had information which made it
necessary for them to get out, and ordered the command to go to the
Union depot. Colonel Gray had been disgusted at the order to leave the
side hill above the Twenty-eighth street crossing, thinking it a great
mistake, and was also disgusted at the order to move down to the Union
depot. Colonel Gray, received orders from General Brown to disband his
command, and at once called around him his officers, and protested
against it. Said it was a disgrace to do so, with the mob in force in
the vicinity, and a disgrace to desert the Philadelphia troops, but the
order was obeyed, and the men dispersed to their homes, carrying their
guns with them; about eleven P.M., General Brown testified, that
leading citizens and military men advised him that it was best to
disband these troops, that their being kept under arms aggravated and
exasperated the mob, and that this advice coincided with his opinion,
and therefore the order was given. About two hundred men were present
at the time they were disbanded, nearly as many more having left from
time to time, during the day and evening, and it is General Brown's
opinion, that they were absent on account of their sympathy with the
strikers, and not on account of fear. When these troops marched down to
the transfer depot, the mob did not jeer or rail at them, as they did
at all times at the Philadelphia troops, and it does not seem from the
evidence, that anything had been done by them to aggravate or
exasperate the mob in the least. General Pearson entered the round
house with General Brinton's command, and left them about half past
eight, to see about getting provisions for the men, who had received no
regular meal since leaving Philadelphia. They had been furnished with
coffee and sandwiches at Altoona, and the same at Pittsburgh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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