“ATTENTION, WORKINGMEN! Great mass meeting tonight, at 7:30 o’clock, at the Haymarket, Randolph street, between Desplaines and Halsted. Good speakers will be present to denounce the latest atrocious acts of the police—the shooting of your fellow workmen yesterday afternoon.
The Executive Committee.”
The hour came. The Haymarket Square and Desplaines Street were crowded. From the top of a wagon, Parsons, Schwab and Spies made inflammatory speeches. Fielden was in the midst of his, when a platoon of police, over a hundred in number appeared, headed by Captain Ward and Inspector Bonfield. Ward commanded the people to disperse, and at that instant the bomb was thrown. It sputtered through the air like a comet and fell with an awful roar in the ranks of the police, exploding with deadly effect. Without wavering an instant, the surviving officers poured a volley of pistol shots into the mob. For several minutes the battle raged. When it was over the ground was littered with the dead and dying. The wounded were taken to the Desplaines Street station.
The ringleaders were arrested the following day. Schnaubelt, the man who threw the bomb was arrested but released by some mistake and disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him.
Spies, Engel, Parson, Fielden, Fischer, Schwab, Lingg and Neebe were tried for conspiracy to murder. The trial was the most sensational in Chicago’s history, and lasted thirty-six days. Neebe was sent to the penitentiary; all the others were sentenced to death. All the men made long speeches in court, protesting against the sentence, but its justice was affirmed by the Supreme Courts of Illinois and of the United States. The execution was fixed for November 11, 1887. A petition asking for clemency was sent to Richard J. Oglesby, then Governor of the State. The sentences of Fielden and Schwab were commuted to life-imprisonment. The day before that set for the execution, Lingg, who was the most ferocious anarchist of all, committed suicide in a horrible manner. He placed a fulminating cartridge in his mouth, cigar-fashion, lighted the fuse and calmly waited until the thing exploded and blew off his head. The four others, Spies, Parson, Engel and Fischer, were executed a few minutes before noon the following day.
The writer of these lines saw these men die, being seated just below the scaffold, with a complete view of the proceeding. The assertion may be ventured, that every witness of that awful event was impressed by the bravery with which the doomed four met their fate. They had lived misguided lives and died ignominious deaths, but there was not a coward among them. When they perished the anarchists of Chicago ceased to exist as a political power. Their party, which suffered a staggering blow by reason of the event of the proceeding year, was obliterated, effaced by the tragedy on the scaffold which vindicated the righteous power of law and order. The anarchists of Europe no longer look to this country as a pleasant or profitable ground for the dissemination of their doctrines.
When you gaze upon the Haymarket monument you may ponder on these things. That simple figure typifies the rise and fall of anarchism in Chicago—one of the most thrilling periods in all its history.
