Q. Would it not have been better to have retired the troops to the Union depot, inasmuch as there were no trains to be moved that night?

A. It would have been a great deal pleasanter to the troops, but it would have given entire possession of the cars, round-houses, workshops, locomotives, and the entire moving machinery of the Pennsylvania railroad—placed it entirely in the hands of the mob.

Q. Could you not have sent out detachments to have driven away any mob that might have gathered for the purpose of burning buildings?

A. That might have been done in an open field, but the fact that the railroad tracks ran along Liberty avenue, are probably ten or twelve feet above the grade on Liberty avenue, and then on the right of the tracks is a hill side, and Brinton did not bring one thousand eight hundred men, Brinton brought about six hundred men, and Colonel Guthrie was at Torrens, and to have scattered the few men out along the railroad tracks—men who did not know the situation of affairs, and did not know the general locality of the ground, they would be subject to all sorts of annoyance, and could be shot down at pleasure by those people. There is one thing the committee must understand, that this mob did not only congregate at Twenty-eighth street. They formed in position on the south side; that they came over in a compact body by regiments. They formed in different localities in Allegheny City, and different places, and they were all marched to a given point, and to have sent a few troops along the line of the track they could have picked them up, one by one, and carried them off body and breeches. There was but one thing to do, and it was to take possession of the buildings, and the only mistake that was made was General Brinton's not calling out his pickets and shooting down the people, as they should have been shot down, and the property would have been saved, and if it had been saved, General Brinton and others would have been hanged for murder, because the feeling in this community at that time was such that if it had not been for the fact that the railroad property had been burned down, and private property had been taken and robbed, and private buildings burned down, there was no officer in command of troops safe, and his life was not worth a penny. The feeling in the community was such that I have no hesitancy in saying indictments would have been found and the officers convicted of manslaughter.

By Mr. Means:

Q. Is there no similarity between this riot, and the military force meeting the enemy in the field of battle?

A. Certainly not. Meeting an enemy on a field of battle, you go there to kill. The more you kill, and the quicker you do it, the better; but in this instance you had a division of six hundred men—my division was six hundred men. Colonel Guthrie was at Torrens, surrounded by a mob. The balance of my troops were at Twenty-eighth street, and here you had men who had fathers and brothers and relatives mingled in the crowd of rioters, and it was very natural for them to have a feeling that to fire then and kill these men, was like shooting their own relatives. The sympathy of the people, the sympathy of the troops, my own sympathy, was with the strikers proper. We all felt that those men were not receiving enough wages.

By Mr. Lindsey:

Q. You say you meet an enemy on a field of battle, and you go there to kill. What was the purpose of the troops in going out to Twenty-eighth street?

A. The purpose of the troops was to try to preserve order and preserve peace. There would be no difficulty of us going out there and commencing to shoot if that had been an enemy. The first thing we would have done, would be to throw out a skirmish line and commence to shoot.