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
During the day (Sunday) a car load of whisky or high wines was broken
open by the mob, and they drank very freely of it, and towards night,
at the time the Union depot and elevator were burned, most of the
active rioters were so drunk as to be unable to continue the work of
destruction, if they had been so disposed. Whisky had done good service
in this case, if never before. The fatigue consequent upon the labors
of Saturday night and Sunday was also producing its effect upon the
rioters, and taken in connection with the fact, that most of them must
have been filled to satiety with rioting and destruction of property,
shows a good cause for the waning of the riot on Sunday afternoon. A
few of the rioters, between five and six o'clock, P.M., went to the
Duquesne depot, (the property of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,) at
the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, with the
intention of burning it and the cars in the vicinity. One car was set
on fire and an attempt made to set the depot on fire, but some six or
eight of the citizens' safety committee arrived there about the time
the rioters did, and they interfered at once to put a stop to
destruction, and had no difficulty in doing so, as the rioters desisted
and left as soon as they saw any authority exerted in opposition to
their schemes.
The Eighteenth regiment (Colonel Guthrie) had remained at Torrens
station, keeping the track clear at that point, and waiting for the
expected trains. The crowd at that place numbered about fifteen hundred
men, composed of mill men, some railroad men, boys, roughs, and tramps.
The passenger trains were allowed to run by the mob, but between
Pittsburgh and Torrens they were filled to overflowing by the roughest
of the crowd, who traveled backwards and forwards between those places
on the trains at their pleasure, and no one dared to interfere with
them. They even climbed on the engine and tender, and roofs of the
cars, and controlled the movements of the trains whenever they chose so
to do between those two points. At Torrens, the crowd would
occasionally become demonstrative and defiant, and Colonel Guthrie was
obliged to charge bayonets on them several times, and each time had no
difficulty in dispersing them. Twice he ordered his men to load in
presence of the crowd, and this of itself dispersed them. Colonel
Guthrie's troops were not allowed to fraternize with the mob, but were
kept entirely aloof from them, and this regiment does not seem to have
become demoralized, as the Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments were.
About four o'clock, P.M., Sunday, Colonel Guthrie, hearing that the
Fourteenth and Nineteenth regiments had been disbanded, and being
unable to ascertain the exact condition of affairs at Pittsburgh, went
there and consulted with General Latta, and his regiment was ordered to
march to that place, where they arrived about dark, and, of course, too
late to be of any service in stopping the destruction of property,
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