The general and his staff reported to the Governor. The door was locked and barred, and the general could not gain admittance until the Governor learned from a second-story window who was seeking an entrance.
The Governor sent for his Cabinet, and five responded. They asked the General many questions, among others, if he would obey an order of the Speaker of the Senate, to which he replied in the negative. He said he had not come on a political mission, and anyway, would not sustain a party clearly in the wrong.
He was asked if he would obey an order from the Speaker of the House. He replied he would not, for two reasons: They had two Speakers, he did not know the right one, and he would not obey the regular Speaker anyway, as he had no right to give him an order. He said he would obey only the Governor, and then only when the Governor gave him an order he had a right to give.
General Patterson refused to help seat either Speaker. He said the House alone could do that. If ordered to fire, he would refuse to issue the order. Nor would he permit a single shot to be fired except in self-defense, if assailed by the rebels, or in the protection of public property. The conference ended abruptly.
The Governor had called upon Captain Sumner, then in command of the Carlisle Barracks, for troops, but he refused to send them to interfere in political troubles.
Governor Ritner also wrote to President Van Buren, laying before him a full account of the affair, requesting the President to take such measures as would protect the State against violence. The Governor named several Government officials who were active in the trouble.
The Governor’s party finding they could not get General Patterson to install them in power, his troops were ordered home and a requisition was made upon Major General Alexander, of the Eleventh Division of State Militia, a citizen of Carlisle, and an ultra-Whig in politics.
Out of three companies only sixty-seven men responded. The battalion, under the command of Colonel Willis Foulk, marched from Carlisle to Harrisburg, December 15, arriving on the following day.
There never had been occasion for soldiers and now as the Carlisle troops arrived the disturbance in the Legislature was nearing an end. The soldiers regarded the trip as a frolic.
On December 17 Messrs. Butler and Sturdevant, of Luzerne, and Montelius, of Union County, three legally elected Whig members, abandoned their Anti-Masonic associates and were sworn in as members of the “Hopkins House,” which gave it a legal quorum over and above the eight Democrats from Philadelphia whose rights the “Rump House” disputed.