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. I have said this was on the Thursday preceding the actual burning
and destruction. As a matter of memory, my recollection is that it was
the 19th, although I am cautious about dates, as I have not a good
recollection about dates. The sheriff then went out with General
Pearson to Twenty-eighth street. I did not go with him. He came back
after the lapse of probably three quarters of an hour, reporting that
he found himself unable to disperse the mob, and that he could get no
force to enable him to disperse it. I then said to the sheriff that it
was a question for him to determine whether he had exhausted his power
for the protection of the company's property. He said he had exhausted
it, and that he had made up his mind to ask the Governor to call out
the troops to disperse the mob. At his request, I wrote a dispatch to
the Governor, and submitted it to him, General Pearson, being present
as I understood, acting as his counsel at the time. Some requests had
come to send a dispatch to the Lieutenant Governor. I was satisfied
that it was not such an occasion as authorized the Lieutenant Governor
to act; but public information in the newspapers being that the
Governor was absent from the Commonwealth, I suggested to the sheriff,
as a matter of prudence, that a dispatch should be sent to the
executive office, at Harrisburg, addressed to the Governor; that a copy
of it should be sent to the Secretary of State, who was then in Beaver,
we understood, with information that it had been sent to executive
office; that another copy should be sent to the Adjutant General, who
was understood to be in Philadelphia, and that the Lieutenant Governor
should be informed of the fact that such a dispatch had been sent to
the Governor, that he might have that information, and, if he had the
authority to act, might exercise it.
Q. Who signed that dispatch?
A. The sheriff.
Q. At what time?
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