Q. What time did Pearson reach you at the Union depot that evening?
A. I have reported it at ten o'clock, and I think that hour is about right.
Q. What was that report, then, as near as you state it?
A. He came in with four of his staff, and I was rather astonished at seeing him. The mob had got pretty thick, and I had learned through the entire afternoon that no soldier could appear upon the highway with any safety, unless he had troops with him. A rope, I learned, was put around the neck of General Brinton's staff officers, and he was threatened with assassination and all sorts of things; but there is no question about the fact, unless a soldier was willing to give up his gun, he had no business out among them. Pearson managed to get down unobserved. The cars were four lines deep—were all down to the round-house—and I suppose he got through them. He said he managed to get down there in that way. I told him I was very much surprised to see him there, and he said the object of his visit was ammunition and rations for the troops—they were almost entirely out, and I told him the situation—whether he understood it fully I do not know—it was impossible for him to get back. I thought his usefulness was about ended. He got there, and he could not return again. I told him to go somewhere else, and report to me at daylight. He went to the house of one of the staff officers, somewhere on the outskirts of the town—Richard Evans. Daylight came, and he could not go through, I suppose, if he had tried. I heard nothing further from him until about one o'clock. One of his staff officers brought a note from him at the Monongahela house. He offered to do any duty he could. He said if he came on the street he was satisfied his life would not be his own for a moment; and I did not see anything for anybody to do just then, and I told him I could see nothing to be answered by his coming out at that time, and he might as well remain where he was.
Q. General Pearson was in command of the troops, then, until ten o'clock?
A. O, yes. I must say something else. He was in command up to ten o'clock. Before I told Pearson to go away, I asked him four or five times very distinctly, and put the interrogatory as strong as I could, to know whether he had left General Brinton in absolute command, and he said that he had—that Brinton was the commanding officer, and I have since letters from General Brinton, in which he has assumed that he was in command of those troops.
Q. After General Pearson left, then General Brinton was the commanding officer?
A. He was the commanding officer.
Q. Had entire charge. Did you have any communication with General Brinton?
A. When Pearson left, no fire had broken out. Pearson rather charges disaster on me in his report. The burning did not occur until after he went home. After Pearson left, Mr. Farr and Colonel Norris, Mr. Linn, and Cassatt and Phillips were active and energetic in getting provisions out—trying at least. Having got an engine fired up, they backed it into the Union depot, and I think they got coffee and sandwiches—a tremendous amount of provisions carried out to where the engine was. An engineer had agreed to push it out, and everything was ready for the movement, when the engineer reported that the fire had gotten between the round-house and the Union depot, and he could not go. The cars were burned, and he could not run his engine past them, and the consequence was that the scheme was abandoned. About that time, a man disguised as a working man, at great personal risk and the exercise of a vast deal of tact, presented himself to my room at the hotel. He told me where he had come from, and brought a dispatch from General Brinton. At that time, I suppose, the fire had got pretty well ahead, and it was rather of a demoralizing character. I had had it in mind, if it was possible, to get a communication to Brinton, and propose some plan to get out of the round-house, and clean that mob out; but I desisted from that when I read that dispatch. I unfortunately have lost it, but I recollect I stood up and read it out in the room, and I recollect I said—that subject of ordering the troops out had been discussed—I said I will assume no responsibility of ordering the troops to fight, when a report like that comes from them, and it left me under the impression that the whole thing was gone up. I recollect, I walked up and down the room that night, and I thought every friend I had would be burned to death by morning. I had no idea they would ever get out, and I devoted my entire energies to their relief. I had been the associate of the First regiment since my early boyhood days, and that dispatch left me and everybody else with that idea. I sat down and answered, in the nature of one which appears upon page 7, of that report, and sent it back by this same man. At that time the mob had got to be so serious, that I did not deem it wisdom to order any troops into the city of Pittsburgh without ammunition. The troops of Colonel Rodgers, which was part of the First division, and which should have been supplied with ammunition, were then about somewhere at Walls station. At the time Pearson came in to me, communications stopped with the round-house—wires were cut. We had one Western Union wire running to different points, and that was the only one we could get hold of. None, however, to the round-house. I sent word to this detachment at Walls, and to the detachments on their way, not to come within ten miles of the city, until they got ammunition. Then I sent this dispatch back to General Brinton: