The Augustus Pleasonton Journal: A Firsthand Look at the Tumult of Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT This article contains excerpts from the diary of Augustus Pleasonton, a colonel in the Pennsylvania volunteer militia in the 1830s, and later a general in the militia. The diary records his experiences during the mobbing and destruction of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, the Buckshot War in Harrisburg in 1838, and the nativist riots in Philadelphia in 1844.