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. They were mostly young--girls and boys. At one o'clock in the
morning I passed the police station on Penn street, in the immediate
vicinity, and the police officers were arresting every person passing
with goods and there was no resistance. They had perfect control. A mob
amounting to not more than five hundred persons was standing near, and
they had a cannon commanding the round-house, but the soldiers had
covered it with their arms, and had killed one or two of the rioters.
The mob engaged in fighting the soldiers were not engaged in the
burning and pillaging. I went among them. One of them called me by
name. I knew his face. He said, "Alderman, don't go down that way; they
will shoot you." But I said, "No," and passed on through them. I said
to him, "You had better go home," when he said that they had come for
the purpose of fighting the militia, and were going to fight them.
Q. What time was that?
A. About four o'clock. It was just breaking day.
Q. Now, this mob gathered around in the vicinity of the
round-house--what was that mob composed of?
A. I recognized that mob as composed nearly all of people who were
working men from the south side of the river.
Q. That is, Birmingham?
A. Yes; some few of them were citizens that I knew. And I would state
that some few were armed, but showed no disposition to violence except
that they had an antipathy to the soldiers that had fired on their
relatives. I mention this fact to show that there should be a
distinction between the rioters proper and the plunderers. They didn't
seem to be acting in concert. A posse of police of twenty men could
have protected all the property that night.
Q. Did you hear any body state that the rioters or the mob had
prevented the fire department from throwing water on the railroad
property?
A. I did not. But I have no doubt they would have prevented it, from
the disposition of the mob. I didn't see any person setting fire to the
Union depot. I took my stand at the elevator. I met one of the clerks
belonging to the company, and he told me that they had refused to let
them take their books out. I said, come back with me, and I will take
them out. So I went back and stationed myself at the elevator, to save
it, if I could, by my presence there, and by calling a _posse
comitatus_. But I could not get any person to serve. The sheds below
Union depot were then taking fire, and two or three men came, and
wanted to go into the elevator. I told them not to go in. At this time
not less than twenty thousand people were there--men, women, and
children--but there was no rioting, and there were not more than eight
or ten or a score of men engaged in spreading the fire at that time.
They seemed to be peaceable.
By Senator Yutzy:
Q. You mean the men who were setting things on fire?
A. Yes; they went to it deliberately'.
Q. You spoke about raising a _posse comitatus_?
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