Christians Leaders- SURE

I was trying to respond to post on presstv.com one of my favorite news sites. I am pretty much wary of news coming out of the US, and I rely or shall i say RELIED on presstv.com and RT.com for news. However i find that there are still many issues with most "news" sites, the most glaring to be a lack of research about things that have nothing to do with the writer. Here's a link to the article: http://presstv.com/usdetail/231580.html.

I try to never comment about things i know nothing about. I know plenty about the bible and "true Christianity", so I can freely write about that, and I am learning about the Muslim faith and Judaism. I know nothing about Buddhism, Taoists or the followers of the Mit (google it) but I am very interested in the 3 main religions of the Earth, and therefore, I do LOTS of research pertaining these religions,nearly daily. So I was much chagrined to read this article, that while it had some good points was totally lacking in THE BIG PICTURE. When the Christianity debate comes up, and talk of this "Jesus" character surfaces, it seems like the first thing to talk about is "Jesus was meek and kind and blah blah blah". Goodness me, if you only stop skipping scriptures and start reading ALL of them you will learn sweet Jesus wasn't so sweet. Or that his name wasn't even Jesus.

I submit to you my two failed attempts at writing on the PressTv site, because I am long winded my comments were over the limit of characters. I tried to break them down by changing to short words like "to" became "2" and "with" became "w/" but I still was too far over, so I decided to instead let the people who like to look up this sort of stuff or those like me when I first started my journey to TRUTH kind of stumbled upon articles of this sort.

I want to add before giving the two comments that i haven't written in FOREVER. Why, I got a busy life! But I have decided to start doing my part in spreading the TRUTH hoping that enough people will wake up in time. I am also writing a novel well and EPIC the likes of which have NEVER been written before NOR published. The book I hope to finish soon, it will be available hopefully for free download, I may even give snippets on this blog, and I will also sell it through an internet publishing site with links to Amazon. This book is going to be great for those who are into black and colored folk history (just cus you speak Spanish dont MAKE you Spanish, my slavery causes me to speak English, your slavery causes you to speak Spanish, time to stop the BS and BE who we are!) and it is based on some historical facts but is mostly a fictionalized accounting of THE HISTORY OF HEBREWS!!! It will be told from the perspective of ONE family going down from the fleeing from Jerusalem around 70AD (due to the destruction of the temple and the Roman conquerors), our time in Africa, to the middle passage, transatlantic slave trade, Civil Rights till now. Some info may not be 100% historically correct, due to the limited amount of credible resources due to certain time periods BUT most of it will be correct, I will even cite info that was directly or indirectly taken from other historical works and sources/publications. THIS is the book to end all books, and is going to be great reading.

SHALOM and read the comments below:

Comment 1
While this was a good article, it seems like the research STOPS just where it needs 2 START. 1st "Jesus" wasn't Jewish, there were no "Jewish" people in the bible. They were Hebrews/Israelites. He did not follow Judaism, which came about from the following of Talmudic doctrines. It is a book of Rabbinical doctrine & has very little 2 do w/the actual bible or Torah/Tanakh (sp). Also He wasn't all lovey dovey, He called his own disciples devils , gave no special treatment 2 his mother, and he actually went in2 the temple w/a little whip overturning tables and whipping animals & merchants alike. Finally He wasn't named "Jesus" at all. In Israel, the Messianic Jews worship/pray 2 Yeshua. There were no "J"'s/J sounds in the Hebrew language & in fact the 1611 KJV bible doesnt include J's (it refers to him as Iesus, if you pick up a strongs concordance or another bible ref, u will find there were many people in teh bible named Iesus). So the idea that these clearly educated politicians & leaders call themselves Christians is very telling. Its because THEY ARE NOT CHRISTIANS. They are straight up Luciferian Zionist pagans. They know how to pull the heart strings of the Americans & Euro ppl by claiming Christianity. I am a true Hebrew (the original Hebrews though the European powers of UK and US which is the same entity hate to admit it were Negroes, or black people and those of original black ancestry/heritage and this is easily identifiable by doing some REAL history research, one good book to read out of many BESIDES THE BIBLE with its constant references to skin color/visage as being black or dark or burnt and hair as being like wool-is African Presence in Early Europe google it, buy it read it), and I follow explicitly the teachings of Christ and the Torah. I am a woman who covers her head (these days all the time, but generally we only have to while praying, reading the bible, prophesying or entering the church). I eat no pork or shellfish, I follow the commandments and laws laid down in the Old Testament, as well as the teachings of Christ (thus my works like alms giving is held very high in my life). I dress modestly, and I DO NOT celebrate the pagan holidays like Christmas, Easter, etc. The politicians KNOW the stories behind Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. They are Satanists. They would never expose the truth of what they REALLY believe and REALLY follow. I currently live in a muslim country, and it's interesting because my Muslim friends are confused and beleieve I am either "kind of" Jewish (hmmm ISH? What is ISH, you either ARE or you ARENT) or Muslim, because no Christians they know hold their God in such high esteem and show fear and respect and actual love. In fact one of my Muslim friends when we explained what we observe and our beliefs exclaimed "you are so close in your beliefs with ours its crazy!" Point blank, the leaders of the US and UK are NOT true Christians and they and their false beliefs lead the entire US and UK "Christians" (including Catholics) astray with their BS beliefs and observances. They are phony Luciferian Satanist frauds. They are being revealed everyday, hopefully enough people will wake up and realize these people are evil, turning something good into something false and laughable. I do want 2 make it clear that being "black" now or admitting ur "black" ancestry isn't enough 2 save u, u MUST follow the laws, statutes and commandments outlined in the bible IN ADDITION 2 Christ being ur saviour. Ur skin color is NOT enough 2 save u.


Comment 2
Those people are not Christians they are Luciferian Satanists. They masquerade as Christians to get the public's approval. It seems like theres a lot of talk about the so called Jesus, when his name wasn't even Jesus and THEY know this. Just do some more research, & PLEASE someone print an article on the inconsistencies w/true historical research (such as his real name, his true skin color because the idea that "it doesnt matter" doesnt mesh well with the fact that if you question the blue eyed long silky hair painting of Cesar Borgias, something wrong w/u, however THEY use that image for Christ so 2 them it DID matter), who the true Hebrews were & their current descendants, the true Message Of Christ, the basis of being "saved" being just saying a few words rather than actually being a good person, who follows the laws statutes and commandments in the bible LIKE CHRIST DID, etc etc etc. PLEASE, start exposing the evil of the Church, like rezashrzad spoke about the materialism of the church and the Prosperity preaching Pimps in the Pulpit, and the truth will start coming out. Christ came from humble means but he had a temper. Christ was righteous but he wasn't this sweet long haired hug everyone dude they play him out to be. Seek the truth and you will find it, because HE is the way the truth and the light!

Truth Revealed- Part 1: Sunday Worship

I was going to write this as a letter to my mom, if you didn't know I was raised in a strict Christian household. Due to this fact I spent most of my life identifying nearly exclusively as a Christian. This is part one:

Dear Mom:

If you are wondering why we haven't been going to church and why for whatever reason there's this belief that I suddenly don't believe in God (which isn't even 0% correct) I would like to explain why.

SUNDAY WORSHIP

The first reason is because I found out a few things about Sunday worship. I will link some videos for you so you see what I am speaking of. The videos usually have scriptural reference either right on screen or it's spoken so please watch and then go read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fjHpQXOEzk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvNTynnzN-E

So that means any church that worships on Sundays is not following the word of God! That means that we have NEVER kept the Sabbath day holy. The same way you make sure not to kill or steal or commit adultery, is the same way you must keep the Sabbath holy. But in most countries Sunday is considered the Sabbath. Most businesses are closed or are on an abbreviated schedule. However it says:

Exodus 20:8-11

⁸ Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

⁹ For six days you shall labour and do all your work.

¹⁰ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

Look at the calendar, Sunday is day #1, Saturday is day #7 or the last day of the week.

Sunday worship was created to worship the Sun god, thus Sun-day. In this country and many others, Sunday is the one day of th week that most businesses are closed down or operate on an abbreviated schedule. Also, as non-Catholics, we are subscribing to the "sabbath" day of Catholicism, which is not biblical (the worship and praying to of Saints and confessing to Popes and priests is satanic in it's origins). Note how many people who are heads of states and worldwide leaders and country representatives pay homage to the Pope, even if they are NOT Catholic. George Bush said it best in an interview, when asked what does he see when he looks in the face of the Pope (a mere man a mortal!!), to this he replied "God." That is very telling. The Bible states that we should have no other God's before Him. So to call a MAN God, is blasphemous on so many levels!

If someone is leading a church that worships on Sunday but KNOWS the Bible, how is that to be explained. Well I like to think of a little something called How to Interpret the Bible… Many churches and Theology colleges teach Bible interpretation as a subject. Each person can bend the words to work for the situation (see prosperity and tithes below) such as during slavery. You know the scripture:

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

This shows how the Word was used to make slavery seem okay There is a verse in the Bible that (paraphrased) there is to be no interpretation of the scriptures. Like you can't take the scriptures and put them in the way that will benefit what you are trying to accomplish. So when a preacher takes a scripture and matches it to his sermon- like prosperity preaching, it's really just him deciding how to twist the words to what he wants you to see and think. (I can't find the scripture now so if someone knows it feel free to add it in the comments section.)

So if the scripture says don’t interpret the Bible and make up your own meaning, then why do we do it? Because that’s what they are teaching us in the church. But it’s not biblical and if they are not teaching us the Bible what are they really teaching us?

Blacks are in fact the true jews of the bible video links...

http://youtu.be/GaWpdgCowxk

Please watch this video and look out for my upcoming posts on the truth of all people. Again, this is not a Pro-Black blog or post. I didn't even WANT to be black all my life, and didn't even like ADMITTING IT! I would lie and say I was black and I was proud! I just admitted it a few days ago that if I had anything to do with it, I would have been white. I grew up with all white people, I assimilated (or actually if you grow up with them you don't assimilate you just grow) and hated every bit of my blackness. But I didn't know better. The media portrays us as shiftless, lazy, savage, whores, scoundrels, worthless. Our history of slavery and civil rights and lack of knowledge in our heritage has always been a source of discomfort and shame in my life. But today I can say that I have openly cried for my people and for ALL people that we could be so deceived.

Please seek the truth for yourself. Click the link and watch all the parts in this series of videos!

Peace be unto you my brothers and sisters!

Current events-Common Controversy

http://youtu.be/gonNsAHMAFM

Some of the things people were saying in the comments section is WILD!

My whole issue is this. One person writes that he speculates (or she-couldn't tell gender by handle name)

• 
  

• lol. Stewart destroyed him? Stewart's argument came down to

  1) I will defend bad behavior by pointing to other supposedly bad behavior.

  2) Common has every right to go visit and defend a convicted cop killer/escaped convict, because he THINKS she is innocent (for some unknown reason, but I think we can easily speculate it's a racial issue).

  Besides- Common is on record saying he disapproves of inter-racial marriage. Liberals should hate him if they're consistent.

So here's the thing. The guy is basically saying that Common is being "bad" by agreeing to meet with and speak with convicted or accused cop killers. However, at no point in this interview did they even discuss that Common publicly said that the two people in question were not guilty. He may have said it elsewhere, not here, it was not addressed. SO for the benefit of the doubt, it's my belief that it's any person's right to speak to and assess for themselves the guilt or innocence of another. They can't out-rightly JUDGE since that's God's job, but they can try to come to their own conclusion, rather than accepting the "official story". In our world there are three sides to every story. The truth, what he or she said and the "official story". So he took his God given right to find out and interview these people for himself. There is no crime in that. He didn't aid and abet them either.

The other thing is the whole racist crap. First of all racism only has the power WE give it. It was manufactured the same way the class and caste system was, a sort of one up man-ship. I am a black woman and of course being called a "bitch" or a "nigger" is supposed to be the WORST thing ever to happen. It's like OMG He called me a nigger bitch! How horrible. But here's the thing. Nigger is what I like to call a racist identifier term. It helps us to know who we shouldn't associate ourselves with. So when someone calls you a nigger, KEEP YOUR SELF MOVING!!!!! It's not that damn serious!!!! And black people can be racists too! So what does that mean!!! It's all just perception and has NO power over you! Racism is a fact of life. I don't hate people who hate black people. They were raised that way. They don't know any better. They don't realize how dumb it is to hate someone based on two superficial things skin color and racial identity (or national identity). They don't know it's ignorant and using the word Nigger helps me to see "That motherf-er is dumb!" So what do you do if someone is racist to you? Call them out. If you notice someone saying or doing something that clearly shows their racism, say something to shame them about it. See how flustered they look. ANd if they call you a nigger, a spic, a chink or whatever else dumb names they can come up with (as if we are still kids on the playground) if they talk about your disabilties, if they talk about your social status, shake your head, don't get mad and say, Damn you are ignorant, how about come and talk to me when you finish reading a book or two?

The guy in the post says Common is being racist basically because of him meeting with these convicted black cop killers. SO WHAT!!!!! There are racists everywhere. They make the rules and we have to allegedly abide by them. They are in the White House, in bars, in clubs, in schools, at the workplace, on the street. WHO CARES? Being racist is really just being dumb. So hat means there is idocracy everywhere!!!! And if he doesn't like interracial marriage he is NOT the first person, and isn't the only non-white person and he won't be the LAST person!!!! Being a racist is like being tall, or short, or fat or skinny. It's like being male or female. It's an ingrained part of who the person is! And it won't go away because I want it to. It won't go away because YOU want it to. So if a grown ass man wants to travel to Cuba to see a woman and judge for himself if she killed a cop and she is black and he is black, who the F cares!!!!!! All they wanted was for this man to read some God Dang poetry!!! Not make any laws or create any constitutional amendments. DAMN!

I especially love that Jon Stewart spoke on how BONO and SPRINGSTEEN both were invited to the White House for the same thing, and they BOTH made songs about convicted cop killers, but NO ONE made any fuss. It's also racist as well. They branded Common (COMMON FOR CRIPESAKES!) as a gangsta rapper when that man ain't got a gangsta bone in his body!!! Is he a racist, most likely kinda since I think inherently we all kind of are but seriously, what he did for poetry had nothing to do with his racial beliefs. So shut up Bill O'Reilly. Go be racist somewhere else!

Who are we?

People United for Truth are you and me. We are people who want to know who we really are, where we really came from and what's really happening here and abroad. There are many topics to cover, and not a long time to do it in (many issues like net neutrality and censorship will affect our ability to get the truth out) but we will push forward.

This is not a Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Buddhist movement. This is a movement for the one true God, and his people. Do not be deceived. More will be revealed so please continue to check back for more information. Subscribe to be updated about new articles, videos, interviews, and content. And above all else, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH (which is why there are references in the Bible, video links, book links, and direct quotations to help weed out the lies and falsities).

Peace be unto you all...

1877 Insurrection: Excerpt from THE AGE OF BETRAYAL: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900

1877 Insurrection: Excerpt from THE AGE OF BETRAYAL: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900

http://yinsurgent.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/1877-insurrection-excerpt-from-the-age-of-betrayal-the-triumph-of-money-in-america-1865-1900/

The Post Gazette Editors were kind enough to publish this bit from Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 by Jack Beatty.

It’s worth checking out for the pictures, alone.

I wished I’d have copied this rather than the version on the ‘about this picture‘ page.

Maybe this’ll get the Yinsurrectionary Times its first ‘cease and desist’ order? Maybe including a link to but the book offers some protection?

WORKERS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN FIGHTING OR EATING
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, “the largest strike anywhere in the world in the 19th century,” according to one historian, was the social earthquake of the Gilded Age, bursting post-Civil War illusions of American immunity to European-style class conflict. To keep afloat during the long depression of the 1870s, the railroads first engaged in wasting rate wars; then, to recoup their losses, colluded to cut wages to $1 a day, beginning July 1, 1877. The Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that $1 a day represented “absolute poverty.”

The strike reached Pittsburgh on the morning of Thursday, July 19, when an announcement from Pennsylvania Railroad Superintendent Robert Pitcairn was posted that said all eastbound trains would “henceforth” be doubleheaders. That is, the length of the trains would be doubled without increasing the size of the crew, costing jobs and endangering train crews.

Augustus Harris, a flagman, refused to go out on the first doubleheader. A brakeman joined him. Yardmen joined them. When a brakeman, following his supervisor’s orders, started to couple a car to an engine, the strikers threw coupling pins, injuring him and making him run for his life. Engineers were warned: Stay away from the trains.

“Hice, you have a perfect right to refuse to go out,” trainmaster David Garrett told Andrew Hice and a score of strikers, “but you have no right to interfere with others.”

“It is a question of blood or bread,” Mr. Hice came back, “and if I can go to the penitentiary I can get bread and water, and that is about all I can get now.”

After a crowd blocked the eastbound switch at the 28th Street crossing in what is now the Strip District, all traffic stopped. Superintendent Pitcairn departed for Philadelphia, leaving his chief clerk, David Watt, in charge. Mr. Watt applied to Mayor William McCarthy for help, but Mr. McCarthy had no will for that. Squeezing Pittsburgh for decades, the Pennsylvania Railroad had incurred the city’s enmity.

“From the first commencement of the strike,” the Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots found, “the strikers had the active sympathy of a large portion of the people of Pittsburgh.”

The mayor could spare no men; budget cuts had winnowed his day police force to 11 men. Mr. Watt could ask for volunteers among the laid-off policemen milling in City Hall awaiting their last paychecks. Ten came forward. Mr. Watt led them up Liberty Street toward the switch at the crossing.

Wading into the crowd he declared, “I’ll turn that switch,” and strode toward it. A striker stepped in front of him. Mr. Watt took the man by the coat, at which a fist “shot out” and struck Mr. Watt in the eye. The police pursued the puncher, the crowd neither resisting nor cooperating. Boys threw stones. Dispatcher Joseph McCabe turned the switch. A freight train pulled out of the yard, the last for three weeks.

THE PHILADELPHIANS INVADE PITTSBURGH
In charge at the Philadelphia headquarters of the Pennsylvania Railroad on July 19 was third vice president Alexander Cassatt, a well-born Philadelphian and older brother of the painter Mary Cassatt. Reports of the trainmen’s walkout reached Mr. Cassatt late in the afternoon. After telegraphing the Pittsburgh office to replace the strikers with “extra conductors and engineers,” he left for Cheswold, the neo-Gothic mansion on the Main Line in Haverford he had commissioned in 1872.

When most Americans used an outdoor privy during the day and a chamber pot at night and five out of six city dwellers still bathed with pail and sponge, Cheswold boasted seven bathrooms. Mr. Cassatt was having dinner with his wife and three children when the station master at Haverford arrived with news that a rough had blacked David Watt’s eye and strikers had stopped all traffic.

When the Trainmen’s Union representatives passed their list of demands to Superintendent Pitcairn in Philadelphia on Friday morning, he handed it to Mr. Cassatt, now in charge. Mr. Cassatt read it — the union mainly wanted the wage cut rescinded and the double-headers cancelled — and handed the list back. “Have no further talk with them,” he instructed Mr. Pitcairn. “They’ve asked for things we can’t grant them at all.” Knowing that Gov. John B. Hartranft, vacationing in Wyoming in a luxurious private car supplied by Mr. Cassatt’s railroad, had called out the National Guard, he felt no need to bargain.

By late afternoon, Gen. Alfred L. Pearson, the commander of the Pittsburgh-based 6th Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard, had mustered only 130 men, a force too small, he told Mr. Cassatt, to disperse the crowd. A cannonade would do it — he had two artillery pieces — but at an unacceptable cost in lives. Mr. Cassatt said he was prepared to pay the price.

Gen. Pearson, a Medal of Honor winner in the Civil War, doubted that his regiment would fire on “their fellow townsmen.” Mr. Cassatt suggested that Gov. Hartranft’s Adj. Gen. James W. Latta “had a good regiment under arms” in Philadelphia; a special train could bring them to Pittsburgh overnight. They would shoot, if they had to. Gen. Pearson wired Gen. Latta that “to avert bloodshed, we should have not less than two thousand troops.”

In a decision a Pittsburgh paper branded “insane,” Gen. Latta called out the 1st Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard under Maj. Gen. Robert M. Brinton. Bad blood between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia extended back decades, to the founding of the Pennsylvania Railroad by “Philadelphia capitalists” and their campaign to keep competitors out of Pittsburgh. How Pittsburghers would react to Philadelphia militia marching through their streets to break a broadly supported strike against the hated Pennsylvania Railroad was foreseeable but not foreseen.

That evening the Philadelphia depot thronged with soldiers and their families. Of 1,200 troops in the division, Brinton’s summons had reached a little over 600. In cars bearing the marks of stonings by strikers in Harrisburg, Johnstown and Altoona, the Philadelphia militia pulled past 28th Street in Pittsburgh early Saturday afternoon, their long polished Springfield rifles sticking out the broken windows.

PITTSBURGH FIGHTS BACK AS BLOOD RUNS IN THE STREETS
The Philadelphians were “spoiling for a fight,” the Army Times later reported, boasting en route they would “clean up Pittsburgh.” They marched up the tracks toward the 28th Street crossing, two Gatling guns pulled bumpily along behind. From a parallel street “wild and famished looking women” hissed at them. Bobbing along the tops of the cars on the adjacent track, Alexander Cassatt’s tall white hat was visible.

As they gained the crossing, the Philadelphians saw they were marching into a tight spot. A steep hill ran up from the tracks on one side. Four coal cars wedged them in on the other, with “spectators” covering the coal. Spread out on the hill were lawyers and businessmen there out of curiosity, families with small children, trainmen, millmen, miners and the remnants of the Pittsburgh militia.

Ordered to occupy the crossing during the night, by midday some of the Pittsburgh militiamen had melted into the crowd; others stacked their arms and sat on the hill with their friends or families. The crowd blocking the tracks numbered “seven to eight thousand.” The Philadelphians, having split their force to guard facilities closer to the depot, were three hundred.

They deployed in a hollow square, facing the Gatlings at the thickest knot of people a few paces down the tracks. A detachment of the “Dark Blues” lowered their rifles and charged the crowd with their bayonets. Men grabbed at the bayonets and tried to pull the rifles away from the soldiers. One “retained his piece by using his bayonet, and my impression is he run the man through,” a militiaman recalled.

From the hill boys threw stones. From the coal cars came a barrage of coal. Mr. Pitcairn, in the center of the square, said coal “clouded the horizon.” A soldier “had the whole side of his face taken off by a brick.” Others collapsed from sunstroke. “Shoot, you sons of bitches, won’t you shoot!,” a voice taunted.

The crowd surged around the Dark Blues. At least three pistol shots, one from a boy on the hill, rang out. No one gave the order, but up and down the square the militiamen opened fire, at first in all directions, then at the hillside. A reporter for the Pittsburgh Post described the scene on the hill: “Women and children rushed frantically about, some seeking safety, others calling for friends and relatives. Strong men halted with fear, and trembling with excitement, rushed madly to and fro, tramping upon the killed and wounded as well as those who had dropped to Mother Earth to escape injury and death.”

Five minutes of shooting, two or three shots a second, had left 17 dead and 60 or 70 wounded. The casualties included at least one woman, a Pittsburgh militiaman, an old man and a four-year-old girl pulled from the line of fire by a lawyer who tourniqueted her shattered knee with his handkerchief. That night the doctors amputated her leg in vain.

THE CITY IS DEVASTATED AND THE BILL COMES DUE
“FIRST BLOOD: Seventeen Citizens Shot in Cold Blood by the Roughs of Philadelphia; The Lexington of the Labor Conflict at Hand” read the headline in the Sunday Pittsburgh Gazette.

Rather than stay in the crossing and be overrun by a crowd that swelled as the news of what they had done spread, the Philadelphians took refuge in the 26th Street roundhouse. They were fired on throughout the night by rifles and shotguns their attackers had stolen from a local gun shop. Toward morning rioters ran a burning coke car topped with petroleum into the buildings adjacent to the roundhouse. Its roof caught fire. At the thought of the Philadelphians burning alive the mob let out a “savage, prolonged yell of exultation.”

Soon men began gagging on the smoke. Before the roof fell in, Gen. Brinton ordered them to evacuate. These factory workers and clerks far from their Philadelphia homes then formed up, one Gatling gun in front, another in the rear, and at a little past 8 marched out of the yards.

The sight of the Gatlings panicked the crowd, which rushed for the alleys running off Liberty Street. As the troops passed, “pistols blazed at them out of doorways and windows, from behind corners, projecting signs, crates and boxes, from cellars and other places,” and even from a police station. Caring people took the wounded into their homes, and lied for them when gunmen, looking for soldiers to kill, rapped on the door. When their pursuers switched to rifles, the Philadelphians fired back, wounding a nonstriking railroad mechanic returning from work and a plasterer and killing a saloonkeeper standing in his own door.

Approaching the Allegheny Arsenal, a major arms depot for the U. S. Army, the Philadelphians were turned away. Afraid that if he harbored Gen. Brinton’s men the crowd would storm the arsenal and make off with its 36,000 rifles and muskets, its cannon and powder magazine, the commander accepted only the wounded. With his troops low on ammunition and without food or water for 24 hours, Gen. Brinton decided not to fight his way to the depot but to march the Philadelphians out of Pittsburgh via the high bridge over the Allegheny River to Sharpsburg, camping on the grounds of the local workhouse.

The crowd now ruled the city. “Vengeance means retaliation,” Barrington Moore, Jr. observed. “It also means a reassertion of human dignity or worth, after injury or damage.”

Saturday night and Sunday, a few outraged Pittsburghers reasserted their dignity against the Pennsylvania Railroad, burning 1,200 freight cars, 104 engines, 46 passenger cars and all 39 company buildings in Pittsburgh, including the Union Depot and hotel. According to Carroll Wright, the first U.S. commissioner of labor, “a great many old freight cars which must soon be replaced by new, were pushed into the fires by agents of the railroad company … and of course the loss was included in claims on the county of Allegheny.”

The tax-paying rioters would have to pay for the damage. The committee investigating the riot found that “the actual destruction was participated in by only 30 to 50 men.” Photographs of the train yards reveal a wilderness of twisted metal and fallen brick extending two miles, not so much resembling Lexington as Berlin circa 1945.

“No parallel in the history of the world upon the strength of what we saw,” Adj. Gen. Latta wired Gov. Hartranft. “A crowd setting fire to something feels irresistible; so long as the fire spreads, everyone will join in and everything hostile will be destroyed,” Elias Canetti wrote in “Crowds and Power.”

And so it was in Pittsburgh. “The strike is over,” a New York Times correspondent wrote on Sunday night, “for there is nothing here to strike against so far as the Pennsylvania Railroad is concerned.”

---

(Excerpted from “THE AGE OF BETRAYAL: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900.” By Jack Beatty. Copyright (C) 2007 by Jack Beatty. Recently published by Alfred A. Knopf.)

More on the Great Betrayal of 1877

Politics and Public Service

In the months following the Election of 1876, but prior to the inauguration in March 1877, Republican and Democratic leaders secretly hammered out a compromise to resolve the election impasse and address other outstanding issues.

Under the terms of this agreement, the Democrats agreed to accept the Republican presidential electors (thus assuring that Rutherford B. Hayes would become the next president), provided the Republicans would agree to the following:

• To withdraw federal soldiers from their remaining positions in the South
• To enact federal legislation that would spur industrialization in the South
• To appoint Democrats to patronage positions in the South
• To appoint a Democrat to the president’s cabinet.

Once the parties had agreed to these terms, the Electoral Commission performed its duty. The Hayes’ electors were selected and Hayes was named president two days before the inauguration.

Why did the Democrats so easily give up the presidency that they had probably legitimately won? In the end it was a matter of practicality. Despite months of inflammatory talk, few responsible people could contemplate going to war. A compromise was mandatory and the one achieved in 1877, if it had been honored, would have given the Democrats what they wanted. There was no guarantee that with Samuel J. Tilden as president the Democrats would have fared as well.

To the four million former slaves in the South, the Compromise of 1877 was the “Great Betrayal." Republican efforts to assure civil rights for the blacks were totally abandoned. The white population of the country was anxious to get on with making money. No serious move to restore the rights of black citizens would surface again until the 1950s.

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