No city in America has had more experience in dealing with dangerous anarchists than Chicago. As early as 1850 there were disciples of anarchy among the foreign element there, but no attention was paid to them until as late as 1873, when they formed a political party and were more or less noisy for several years. In 1877, during the great railroad strike, they had their first clash with the police and several were killed, and many wounded. Thanksgiving Day, 1884, under the leadership of Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, Sam Fielden, and others they hoisted the black flag and marched through the fashionable residence district of the city, uttering groans and using threatening language. Subsequently they threatened to blow up the new Board of Trade building, and marched past the edifice one night, but were headed off by the police. Parsons, when asked afterward why they had not blown up the Board of Trade building, replied that they had not looked for police interference and were not prepared. “The next time,” he said, “we will be prepared to meet them with bombs and dynamite.” Fielden reiterated the same sentiments and expressed the opinion that in the course of a year they might be ready for the police.
During all these years the anarchist leaders had openly preached violence, and had taught their followers how to make dynamite bombs. They went so far as to give in detail their plans for fighting the police and militia, and caused more or less consternation among the timid residents of the city.
The local authorities made no effort to stop any of these proceedings. Mayor Harrison believed that repressive measures would be useless and considered that to allow the anarchists to talk would gratify their vanity and preclude the possibility of riot. That such a belief was fallacious, subsequent events proved.
In 1886 came the agitation for the establishment of the eight-hour day, and the anarchist leaders were prominent therein. The first collision between the anarchists and the police came at the McCormick reaper works. There was a sharp fight and the police dispersed the rioters. It was said that many workingmen were killed in that fight, but the story was exaggerated, no one being killed. The anarchists held secret meetings at once and devised a plan to revenge themselves on the police, and to burn and sack the city. As a first step, and for the purpose of demoralizing the police force, a public meeting was called to be held in the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4. The meeting was really held on Desplaines street, between Randolph and Lake streets. Parsons, Spies and Fielden spoke from a wagon in front of Crane’s foundry, until the police came up to disperse the meeting, on account of the violent character of the utterances. Inspector Bonfield and Captain Ward were in charge of the police, and no sooner had Captain Ward called upon the crowd to disperse than a bomb was hurled into the midst of the unsuspecting policemen. It burst with a loud report, knocking down nearly every one of the one hundred and twenty-five men in the detail and badly wounding many.
Inspector Bonfield at once rallied his men, and charged the mob with a resistless rush that carried everything before them. After the square had been cleared the officers began to attend to their wounded comrades. Only one, M. J. Degan, had been instantly killed, although seven died afterward from their injuries. Sixty-eight others were injured, some so badly that they were maimed for life, and incapacitated for work.
Of all the men who were subsequently arrested for this crime, only eight were placed on trial. These were August Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and Louis Lingg, who were found guilty and sentenced to death, and Oscar Neebe, who was sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. Lingg committed suicide by blowing his head to pieces with a bomb while confined in the jail awaiting execution. The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to imprisonment for life by Governor Oglesby. The other four were hanged in the county jail on November 11, 1887. They were buried at Waldheim cemetery the following Sunday, November 13, and this occasion was made memorable by the honors shown the dead by the anarchist societies of Chicago. It was the last great outpouring of anarchy that the city has seen. Schwab, Fielden, and Neebe were afterward pardoned by Governor Altgeld, and released from the penitentiary.
Looking back upon the work of anarchy in the last fifty years or more its results should be discouraging to any but the most hair-brained of the type. Its violence has not altered or unsettled the course of a single government against which it has been directed. If individuals here and there have been murdered the crimes have reacted upon the tools of butchery, most frequently sending the assassin to a dishonored grave, leaving the name of his kinsman a reproach for all time. The seed of ideal anarchy still is being sown, however, and its crop of crimes and criminals may be expected to be harvested in the future, as in the past, unless, by some concerted, radical efforts of civilization its bloody sophistries are to be wiped from the world.
CHAPTER VII.
SCENES AT BUFFALO FOLLOWING THE ASSASSINATION.
The people of Buffalo and the visitors within their gates behaved admirably during all the weary days and nights after the shooting of the President. That spirit of mob law, which pervaded the multitude that surged about the Temple of Music in the Exposition grounds at the time of the shooting, speedily gave way to one of obedience to law. The knowledge that the President’s life had not ebbed away, and that eminent physicians said he would recover, had a tendency to restore men’s minds to the normal, and soon the question which passed from man to man was “what news from the President?”
Even the thought of wreaking vengeance on the assassin seemed to have fallen into abeyance. The people became quiet in demeanor, but there was constant anxiety that the physicians had not told all, and that the Nation might at any time be called on to mourn the death of its Chief Executive. This feeling was intensified by the hurrying to the city of members of the Cabinet who were not in attendance on the President at the time he faced the assassin. The first trains brought Vice-President Roosevelt, Secretaries Hay, Gage, Root, Long and Hitchcock, Attorney-General Knox and Postmaster-General Smith. Senator Mark Hanna and other close friends of the President also started hastily for Buffalo, and many of them remained there until the end. The presence of these personages, perhaps, had a tendency to quiet public feeling, inasmuch as they one and all bore themselves with marked dignity during the trying time.