Kieffer Family Involvement in Haymarket Affair, Chicago 1886
Chicago: City of the Century | Article
The Anarchists and the Haymarket Square Incident
May 4, 1886
Albert Parsons was the leader of the American branch of the International Working People'southward Clan (I.Due west.P.A.), an anarchist group whose stated goal was to engineer a social revolution that would empower the working class. Parsons himself was a paradox: a Confederate soldier who became a Radical Republican after the Ceremonious War and married a former slave.
August Spies was the editor of the English-language agitator newspaper,The Warning. Together, Parsons and Spies addressed the working form German language community of Chicago, calling for demonstrations and organizing parades. The I.W.P.A. had, at most, only five one thousand members, but its tactics were so confrontational that it had an undue influence.
Demonstrators would ophidian by the clubs and homes of the elite, or effectually the Chicago Board of Trade, shouting slogans and waving fists. Articles in the agitator newspapers explained how to make bombs with dynamite, and editorials supported the assassination of public officials in Europe. On his desk, Spies kept a length of pipe that he claimed was a bomb.
Dynamite had just been invented, and its properties were both exaggerated and feared. It "made one man the equal or an ground forces." Bombs "could be carried around in one'southward pocket with perfect safe." Many Chicago capitalists predictable an armed revolution.
In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions organized a May Solar day general strike to demand an eight-hr twenty-four hours. The anarchists saw an opportunity to increase membership and joined the outcome. Because Chicago had a sympathetic mayor in Carter Harrison, the nationwide movement focused on that urban center. On May 1st, 80,000 workers lay down their tools and marched up Michigan Artery behind Spies. Hundreds of private security and militia groups monitored the march, but the solar day ended peacefully.
Meanwhile, a strike was on at the McCormick Reaper Works. On May 3, strikers attacked scabs leaving the McCormick building. Immediately, two hundred policemen led by Captain "Blackness Jack" Bonfield attacked the crowd, swinging nightsticks and firing their guns. Two workers were killed.
The anarchists chosen for a rally the next night at Haymarket Square to protest the deaths. Mayor Harrison had Bonfield and his men stand past, a cake from the foursquare. Harrison himself was in the crowd, making himself as conspicuous equally possible: "I desire the people to know their mayor is here." After Spies and Parsons spoke, rain began to fall, dispersing the crowd. Harrison left the rally, stopping past Bonfield to permit him know that the meeting posed no threat.
Later Harrison left, notwithstanding, Bonfield sent in his troops. From somewhere in the crowd, a bomb was thrown in front of the columns of police. When the dust settled, vii police officers were dead and sixty were injured, many of them hit by wild shots from fellow policemen. A similar number of civilians were killed and injured, although the number is uncertain because few would admit to being at the rally.
The constabulary rounded up suspicious strange workers and agitator leaders. Seven men stood trial for murder. On June 21, they were joined by an 8th — Parsons himself. He had fled the city after the bombing, but turned himself in to be tried with his comrades. No one had been identified every bit the bomber, only the eight defendants were tried as accessories to murder based on their inflammatory speeches.
The judge, Joseph E. Gary, immune men who had already decided on a guilty verdict to sit on the jury.
The defense lawyer, William Perkins Black, provided alibis for all eight men. The only 2 who were at the rally at the time of the bombing had been on stage, in full view of the crowd and police.
The mayor, Carter Harrison, testified that the rally was peaceful and attended by women and children.
The prosecuting chaser, Julius S. Grinnell declared, "Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial... Gentlemen of the jury, convict these men, brand examples of them, hang them and you relieve our institutions, our society."
The jury reached a verdict in iii hours: death by hanging for seven of the men, including Parsons and Spies, fifteen years in prison for the eighth, August Neebe.
The wives of the defendants immediately initiated the appeal process. Announcer and reformer Henry Demarest Lloyd led a national campaign to grant clemency. Even bankers like Lyman J. Gage favored clemency, believing that moderation would pb to improved relations between uppercase and labor. Potter Palmer and Charles Hitchinson were inclined to agree, just Marshall Field was not. A number of other men confided to Cuff that they were non willing to publicly disagree with Field, the wealthiest and about powerful businessman in Chicago.
Even Judge Gary wrote to the governor on behalf of the two men, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab, who had asked for mercy. Their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Governor Richard J. Oglesby said that he could just pardon the two considering the police required each prisoner to enquire for clemency.
One of the prisoners, Louis Lingg, had a dynamite cigar smuggled into his prison cell. He committed suicide in prison, blowing his face off in the procedure.
On November 11, 1887, the prisoners were brought out to the hangman'southward platform. Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer stood earlier the crowd with hoods roofing their faces. And so Spies spoke: "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices y'all are throttling today."
The trapdoor opened.
In June 1893, a Haymarket monument was unveiled in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery. That same calendar month Governor John Altgeld unconditionally pardoned Field, Neebe and Schwab because the trial and the conduct of the gauge had been shamefully unjust. Even anarchists "were entitled to a off-white trial,"the governor declared, "and no greater damage could possibly threaten our institutions than to have the courts of justice run wild or to give way to pop bedlam."
Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chicago-anarchists-and-haymarket-square-incident/
0 Response to "Kieffer Family Involvement in Haymarket Affair, Chicago 1886"
Post a Comment