A. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I will give another little fact. This morning a lady came to my office, asking me to solicit transportation for her over the Pennsylvania railroad to Philadelphia. She wished to get a pass. I asked her why, and she said that she had a son living in Chester county who had come here and mixed himself in with the riots, and had laid out and slept out until he had got a cold, and that he now was dying with consumption, and she was poor, and wished me to solicit the Pennsylvania railroad company to give her a pass to go and see him before he died. She lives here, and her son is married and lives in Chester county. She lives nearly across the street from where I do. But I didn't know she had this son, though.
Q. As soon as you returned on Thursday night from Twenty-eighth street, you telegraphed to the Governor?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Had you become satisfied, then, that it was necessary to call out the troops?
A. Yes, sir; I had. The riot had assumed—although there had been no actual outbreak, except the striking of Mr. Watt—had assumed such proportions then, that it would have been folly for me to attempt in this city to have got a posse to remove the crowd. I might, if I had had time, have got the rural districts of this county to assist me—I might have got a force there, but then it would have been a worse slaughter than what it was. But in this city it would have been folly for me to try it. I knew the feeling of the people.
Q. Did you make any effort on Friday forenoon to raise a posse?
A. I did not. I viewed it in this way. That, when I had called on the State authorities, and the State authorities had responded, that that relieved me of that responsibility of calling a posse. In fact, I considered the idea of a sheriff of any county calling out a posse almost as an obsolete piece of law to-day. The time was, when the military were under the control of the sheriff, but it is not so now.
Q. Do you know what the law is in regard to calling out the militia to suppress a riot?
A. I have read the acts of assembly.
Q. You knew what they were?