Q. Business men of the place expostulated with you?
A. Yes; and after the firing, men came to me and insisted upon my taking the troops out of the round-house. I want to say this in regard—there may be an impression in regard to the manner in which the Sixth division responded to my order—that it may not be known to the committee that we have no direct way of calling out the troops—that is, by any alarm—not by a fire alarm or anything of that kind. An officer has to hunt up his officers, and they, in turn, have got to hunt up their men, who are scattered all over through two cities, and when I notified Colonel Guthrie, I found him early in the morning and he was hard at work, and they responded as promptly as any regiment could possibly respond. There was no way to get his men together any sooner than they did. They went to Torrens station, as per order, and I believe remained intact until the 6th or 7th day of September. I do not know of them having disbanded for a single instant, from the time that they were first called out, until the end of the trouble in Luzerne county, and the Fourteenth regiment, as I have subsequently learned, performed their service as well as a regiment could. They had been ordered to disband, contrary to the wishes of Colonel Gray and his officers, and nearly obeyed an order made by a superior officer.
By Mr. Lindsey:
Q. You knew nothing of the command which General Brown gave?
A. No, sir; there are officers who heard the command and know all about that.
Q. He did it upon his own responsibility?
A. Certainly. Had General Brown carried out the instructions he received at Twenty-eighty street, and kept the hill side and the tracks clear, with the plans I had adopted of taking General Brinton out, and letting him occupy the position, and sending a portion of General Brown's command to Colonel Guthrie, and used a portion for the taking out of trains, I think there would have been no subsequent troubles. Instead of that we found the ground entirely occupied and in possession of the rioters and sympathizers, and the result was just as you know.
Q. Could the destruction of property have been prevented by any other distribution of the troops that night, do you think?
A. I presume, had we known the fact that the rioters had converted themselves from men to devils, and had concluded to roast everybody alive, and gone into it in the manner in which they did, that something might have been done. Of course, no one could anticipate the fact that those men would send burning flames of oil down upon the troops in the round-house. No man living could ever think of such a thing.
At this point the committee adjourned until ten o'clock, to-morrow morning.