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
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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
A. One man did it. I think he is in jail now. That evening we had this
man McCall in the Twelfth ward station, and there was a rumor that the
mob was going to attack the Twelfth ward station and rescue him. I went
to that station, and took that man McCall and marched down, putting
twenty policemen behind us. We passed through the crowd, and nothing
was said, and got down a few squares when there happened to be a friend
of mine sitting in a car, and he hallooed at me and said, "For God's
sake get in the car." The street was blocked. The car was stopped at
the corner of Twenty-fourth and Penn, and we got in with our prisoner.
Some of the crowd caught up with us. I had a revolver. One fellow put
up a revolver at my ear when I struck him over the face with mine. We
still kept on going, and we took our prisoner to the Central station. I
didn't get back again that night. I was there again on the 21st,
Saturday, and about eleven o'clock that night--Saturday night--I saw
this burning. I was on Smithfield street at the time, and met a great
many men coming down with goods. The feeling was not good towards me on
account of this man McCall. I met a couple of parties with rolls of
cloth, and we arrested them, and by morning we had more than a hundred
in there for carrying off stuff. On Sunday morning, after the
Philadelphia troops left--and before they did leave--we had that man in
jail that I saw shooting into them with a breech-loading rifle. I went
up to the round-house, and made a search there. I heard Chief Evans
state that he saw whisky running into the cellar of the round-house. I
don't know where there is a cellar to the round-house, but there is a
cellar to the carpenter shop.
Q. Is the carpenter-shop not one part of the round-house?
A. The carpenter-shop is on the right, and there was a space of thirty
or forty feet between them. The Philadelphia troops I saw leave the
round-house. They came out and formed, and went off.
Q. How did they come out?
A. In a body, in regular marching order.
Q. Where was the crowd when they came out?
A. Very scarce.
Q. Where had the crowd gone to?
A. Dispersed and secreted themselves in buildings and every place. I
went as far as Seventeenth street--the crowd had started, too--then the
fire had not got that far. It was about the middle of the day. We
stopped there, and during the time we were there undertook to prevent
parties from breaking open the cars and setting them on fire, which we
did succeed in stopping some. Afterwards I saw men dropping coal down
below the track, and rolling barrels of oil down and setting them on
fire. They were strangers to me. We couldn't get the force apparently
together. If we had got them together at that time, a hundred men would
have subdued the riot at that time, because it was apparently the work
of boys. There were not as many men as boys, but the force had got
scattered.
Q. What time did the troops come out of the round-house?
A. Near seven or eight o'clock.
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