General JAMES W. LATTA, _Harrisburg_:
I have ordered out all my infantry and two sections of Hutchinson's
battery. The Eighteenth regiment, under command of Colonel Guthrie,
are at Torrens station, where several hundred determined rioters
are assembled, and defy the officers of the law. The Fourteenth and
Nineteenth I will station between the Union depot and East Liberty.
At the outer depot, fifteen hundred or two thousand men are
congregated, and refuse to allow the passage of any freight trains.
I will station the artillery at that point. It will require a
strong hand to quell the disturbances, and disperse the mob.
Thinking it better to overawe the mob by an appearance of strategy,
and to save bloodshed, I have ordered out my command as above. A
portion of the eighteenth regiment were on duty at eight o'clock,
A.M.
A. L. PEARSON,
_Major General_.
I then left Harrisburg with Mr. Farr and Colonel Hassinger and Mr.
Russell on the fast line west. During the morning, I might say that
Colonel Scott was telegraphing me quite considerably about whether or
not there were enough troops, and earnestly suggesting me to put some
more in the field, and to show the opinion in which the troops of
Pittsburgh were held at that time, there is a dispatch here which has
never been published, and which I will read now. I thought I could
understand how to handle people I had been with for a good while, and
there ain't any question about it, but this Sixth division, of the
National Guard, stood the equal of any in the Commonwealth, on the
morning of the 20th day of July, and I assured Colonel Scott, the
troops were, in my judgment, so far as I understood the situation,
satisfactory to me. I sent to Colonel Scott this telegram, dated
Harrisburg, July 20, at noon.