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. That was in the neighborhood of twelve o'clock that night. I am
giving my judgment about those hours. Those dispatches signed by the
sheriff were sent. There was a great deal of telegraphing that evening
there, between myself and the officials of the railroad company, Mr.
Pitcairn and others, the details of which I cannot now recollect. In
the course of several hours after that dispatches were received from
Mr. Quay and the Adjutant General by the Sheriff, informing him that
the Governor had ordered out the troops. Dispatches were also received
there by General Pearson, from the Adjutant General, giving him the
same information. I cannot give the hour of those dispatches; but I
know before we left the office, probably about five o'clock in the
morning--four or five o'clock, perhaps--the sheriff and General Pearson
had both received dispatches to the effect that the Governor had
ordered out the military to the assistance of the sheriff, and that
General Pearson had drawn an order, in pursuance of those dispatches,
for one of his own regiments of this city to turn out. Probably about
five or six o'clock that morning several of us left the office and went
to bed at the Union depot. That was Friday morning. Now as to the
actual progress of the strike. What occurred at the outer depot during
Friday, I believe, I have no personal knowledge, and I do not know that
I had any intercourse with any of the officials of the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company, and not, probably, with the military officers, until
about four or five o'clock that evening. There was delay in the
military responding to the general's orders. Some information reached
our office, where I was engaged in other business in the office of the
Penn company, that General Pearson was about to open the tracks with
the military, and was starting for that purpose from Union depot. Mr.
Thaw and I went up there together. When we arrived, there was a company
ready to go to Twenty-eighth street. Mr. Cassatt was there, one of the
vice-presidents of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I do not know
what was said when I got there; but in some way my opinion was asked as
to the propriety of the movement. Somebody asked me, I do not know who.
There were a great many people around the dispatcher's office, where
General Pearson was. I was asked the question. I said in reply, that as
an officer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company I had no opinion at all
to give, that the civil power of the country having been called upon,
and the sheriff having been called upon, and the military being there
with General Pearson in command of them, I certainly would not give any
instructions that would interfere with the discretion either of the
sheriff or of General Pearson. I might reply, as a citizen of
Pittsburgh, that there was no need of repeating the old maximum, which
had got very trite, that there was no use in firing blank shot at a
mob; but that when they were ready to strike, they should do it
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