Together with the testimony given above, of which, of course, the most important was that of the prisoner Samuel Fielden, were the stories of a number of other witnesses whose names have been here omitted. The reason for this is, that while the statements of these persons were of much importance in the trial of the case, to print them all would stretch this book of mine out to unconscionable length. It will suffice to say that several witnesses testified strongly in support of the Anarchist theory of the episodes which occurred about the famous wagon at the Haymarket. Half a dozen others declared that they would not believe Harry W. Gilmer on oath. This statement of the evidence offered is made necessary by the space at my disposal. I have tried throughout this work to be wholly fair to the defense, and the reader will of course understand that these witnesses corroborated the testimony of others which has been previously given in full in these pages.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Close of the Defense—Working on the Jury—The Man who Threw the Bomb—Conflicting Testimony—Michael Schwab on the Stand—An Agitator’s Adventures—Spies in his Own Defense—The Fight at McCormick’s—The Desplaines Street Wagon—Bombs and Beer—The Wilkinson Interview—The Weapon of the Future—Spies the Reporter’s Friend—Bad Treatment by Ebersold—The Hocking Valley Letter—Albert R. Parsons in his Own Behalf—His Memories of the Haymarket—The Evidence in Rebuttal.
THROUGHOUT the trial the defendants maintained an air of careless indifference. Occasionally during the presentation of particularly striking and damaging evidence—notably that of Thompson and Gilmer—they were noticed to wince, but the flush was only momentary. It was apparent that the prisoners expected in some manner to extricate themselves from their perilous position, and the casual observer would have supposed them involved simply in an ordinary trial. Whatever may have been their real feelings, they did not betray them. After they had begun to place evidence on their own behalf before the jury, they even wore a certain air of cheerfulness; and whereas previously a sort of stolidity had marked their demeanor, their general bearing now was that of supreme confidence. They evidently felt confident of having made a favorable impression upon the jury. They possibly calculated upon their having successfully impeached the evidence of Gilmer and having proven to some extent their own disconnection with the Haymarket explosion. Fielden’s plausible explanations also, no doubt, added to their confidence.
Taking the evidence of the State as a complete exposition of the conspiracy, there seemed to be no consolation in that direction; but their hope rested in winning over the jury by raising a reasonable doubt through the preponderance of offsetting testimony on their own side, and by making the jury believe, by the manner of their conduct under the severe fire of the prosecution, that they sincerely felt themselves innocent of all “guilty knowledge.”
They played their part well, and their attitude is not at all surprising when their former bloodthirsty propensities are taken into consideration. In an ordinary murder or conspiracy trial Fielden’s statements might have had some influence in mitigation of extreme punishment, but, overshadowed as it was by overwhelming counter-evidence of complicity in a stupendous crime, the jury subsequently determined that it saw no way of disconnecting him from the other conspirators.
The defendants pretended they had a host of witnesses beyond those that they really required to prove that they had never dreamed there would be a bomb thrown at the Haymarket, but that they only needed to use a few of these witnesses to establish their innocence. Still, they put a very large number on the stand. The testimony of all these pretended to show what a harmless set of men the State had arrested and put on trial for their lives.
The trend of much of the evidence for the defense seemed directed toward proving the police responsible for the massacre, by having opened fire on a “peaceable gathering;” and, through a brother of the defendant Spies, it was attempted to prove that the enmity of the police toward Anarchists was so great that one of them tried to shoot the defendant in the back while at the Haymarket. This brother of Spies—Henry—had been wounded in the abdomen, and he endeavored, on the witness-stand, to show that he had received the injury while suddenly pressing down the revolver that was aimed at his brother. The explanation was too lame to be serviceable.