Everyone in the courtroom from Judge Thayer to the defendants themselves knew that this was the great divide. In these few sentences the issue of radicalism, moving so long just below the surface, finally emerged. Katzmann at once objected, and his objection was a warning to the defense. The district attorney was perfectly willing to avoid any reference to the political views of the two anarchists if the defense would agree to do the same. For the latter it was a peculiar dilemma. Moore was aware of the latent syllogism that the jurors no doubt then shared with most native-born Americans. An anarchist is capable of anything; Sacco and Vanzetti are anarchists; Sacco and Vanzetti are capable of anything: Q.E.D. Yet to go along with the district attorney, to gloss over the defendants’ political beliefs, would be to destroy any explanation except that of consciousness of guilt for their actions on the night of their arrest.
Before Vanzetti took the stand, Judge Thayer had advised the McAnameys that they had better consider whether or not they were going to inject the radical issue into the trial. Moore insisted there was no alternative. John McAnamey told his brothers the same thing: that the defendants would have to tell about their connection with the radical movement fully and frankly. Only thus could they account for their equivocal behavior.
When Vanzetti from the stand finally pronounced the words radical movement, John McAnamey was just leaving the courtroom. “As I was passing out,” he testified six years later before the Lowell Committee, “Judge Thayer looking over to me, well in his peculiar way of laughing or smiling, sort of threw back his head as much as to say, ‘Well you see Mr. McAnamey it is coming out.’ That is what he was telling me by his facial gesture. That stands out clearly in my mind. The government would have wanted that kept out of the case I am thoroughly satisfied because how could the men explain the facts?”
Vanzetti admitted he had been in West Bridgewater once, six years before his arrest, but said he had never been there again until May 5. He had never been to East Braintree, had never asked directions of a stranger on the South Shore train, and he had not been in South Braintree on April 15, 1920. When Jerry McAnamey asked him why he had lied to Chief Stewart in the Brockton police station he answered: “Because I was scared to give the names and addresses of my friends as I know that almost all of them have some books and some newspapers in their house by which authority take a reason for arresting them and deport them.”
The direct examination continued until midafternoon. Then the district attorney took over with a cross-examination that was to last through the following morning. For this climax Katzmann pushed Williams aside and took full command. His first question was barbed.
“So you left Plymouth, Mr. Vanzetti, in May 1917, to dodge the draft, did you?” All that Vanzetti could answer was “Yes, sir.” Katzmann made him admit that he had run away so that he would not have to be a soldier.
“If I refused to go to war,” the nettled Vanzetti told his interrogator, “I don’t refuse because I don’t like this country or I don’t like the people of this country. I will refuse even if I was in Italy and you tell me it is a long time I am in this country, and I tell you that in this country as long time I am, that I found plenty good people and some bad people, but that I was always working hard as a man can work, and I have always lived very humble and—” Katzmann, who had allowed him to go on that far, now demanded that the answer be stricken out.
Vanzetti’s story shaped itself awkwardly through the counterpoint of questions and answers. Katzmann hinted that when he was working on the railroad at Springfield he had driven a truck. Vanzetti agreed that there were trucks used, but denied he had ever driven one—he did not know how to drive, still did not know. The district attorney then asked him what he had really intended to do the night he and Sacco had gone to West Bridgewater. To John Dever the answer did not seem very cohesive: “We want to take the automobile, and then my intention is to take the automobile with Boda, because I do not know how to drive the automobile, to go to Bridgewater and if we will be able to find the party, because I do not remember the address of the party. I do not know exactly where he lived. We will tell to Pappi about telling the Italian people of Bridgewater to come in Brockton next Sunday at the speech, and after I found Pappi, and speak to Pappi, go toward Plymouth and speak with my friends if I can find some friends who want to take the responsibility of receiving such books in their house, in his house.”
Vanzetti admitted that he had lied to Katzmann in the Brockton station the morning after his arrest, even after the district attorney had told him he was not compelled to answer questions. He had lied about his revolver, about buying the cartridges and firing them, about knowing Boda, about the motorcycle. “I was scared,” he explained. Admitting that most of these lies would not have helped conceal the names and addresses of his friends, he still insisted that he had lied because he had been frightened about his friends’ safety and because Salsedo’s death in New York had made him afraid of the police.
Katzmann hemmed him in, getting him to say there were half a dozen people in Bridgewater from whom they were planning to collect literature, forcing him to confess he knew none of their names. The district attorney then questioned him about his stay in Mexico, leading quietly up to the thundering demand: “And are you the man, Mr. Vanzetti, that on May ninth was going to advise in public meeting men who had gone to war? Are you that man?”