Q. You were to preserve the peace at all hazards—if necessary to preserve the peace to call, you are justifiable in doing it?
A. Certainly.
Q. When an attack is made upon your troops with clubs and stones, and firing into your troops, are you not justified in killing?
A. My opinion may be different from a great many other military men. I look at it in this way: when troops are officered, it is the duty of the officers to do the thinking. If every man that carries a musket has a right to think and shoot just as he thinks, there is no occasion to have any officers at all, because, when we started out from the Union Depot hotel these Philadelphia men were insulted long before they arrived. Colonel Guthrie was insulted at Torrens, and if each man had carried out his own thoughts and commenced to shoot, it would have showed a great want of discipline.
Q. Would not the commanding officer be justifiable in giving the command to fire?
A. Most undoubtedly so. He would not only be justifiable, but it would be his duty so to do, and I have no hesitancy in saying, from what I have learned from the manner in which General Brinton's troops were received and treated, and the shots that were fired at them, the stones that were hurled at them, and the fact that these men were knocked down, it was his duty to have given the order to fire, and if I had been there I would have had no hesitancy in giving the order.
Q. What I understand you to say is, that there was not a public sentiment that would have justified the commanding officer in giving that command to kill?
A. The sentiment afterwards showed that the sentiment was directly against the firing.
Q. Do you mean to say that the civil authorities, the civil arm of the government, would not have protected the military officer in giving a command to fire under circumstances of the attack made there at Twenty-eighth street on the militia?
A. I have got to answer that in a twofold capacity. As a lawyer, I believe that the courts would most undoubtedly have sustained the officer. I believe that the mayor and his police were in direct opposition to the troops—after having heard the crowd state that the mayor and his police were in sympathy with them, and finding that no arrests had been made, and knowing the fact that upon every occasion that mayor's police were only too anxious to protect men up for disorderly conduct, that there was not a police officer to be found at Twenty-eighth street, and that no arrests had been made, although there was any number of chances to arrest for disorderly conduct and other offenses—finding that none of those officers were there, I had no other way to think that these men had said truly, that Mayor McCarthy and his police were in sympathy with the mob. I telegraphed Mayor McCarthy after the troops had been taken into the round-house—I telegraphed him, and I told him I thought his presence there might be the means of saving life. I believe then, and I believe now, that if Mayor McCarthy had come at that time and talked to the crowd, something might have been done. There was then a terrible feeling against the troops, and no feeling against the police. I believed then, and I believe now, that if he had responded to my telegraph, many valuable lives might have been saved. There was no sympathy extended to the troops by anybody outside of the sheriff and his posse. The sheriff and his posse were the only ones that gave any aid or assistance to the troops. He did all that he knew how and all that he could.