STATE’S ATTORNEY GRINNELL took Wednesday and a part of Thursday in which to deliver his argument. He indulged in no flights of oratory, but presented a review of the case at once able, convincing and unassailable. He began as follows:
“I said to you in the opening, gentlemen, that in this country, above all countries in the world, is Anarchy possible. In my investigations of this case, in my conduct with it, with my knowledge of my own country and the freedom we enjoy and possess, I have been led to conclude that that is true. In those strong European governments, where there is monarchical or strongly centralized government, they strangle Anarchy or ship it here. Everybody comes to our climate; everybody reaches our shores; our freedom is great—and it should never be abridged—and here with that freedom, with that great enjoyment of liberty to all men, they seek to obtain their end by Anarchy, which in other countries is impossible. As I said, there is one step from republicanism to Anarchy. Let us never take that step, and, gentlemen, the responsibility which has devolved upon you in this case is greater than any jury in the history of the world ever undertook. This is no slight or mean duty that you are called upon to perform. You are to say whether that step shall be taken.
“When the Haymarket tragedy occurred, the spontaneous declaration by every honest, every law-abiding man and woman in this city was: ‘An outrage has been perpetrated; a great crime has been committed; but let there be a cool, unimpassioned trial and let the guilty suffer. Then and not till then.’ That has been the sentiment of every newspaper in this city from which counsel sought to make you believe by quotations there had been something said to the contrary. The little extracts and abstracts that have been clipped from the newspapers that they have talked to you about are such extracts as met the disapproval of the newspapers. And even as to what Capt. Black referred to the other day in your hearing and which Foster elaborated to you, something that some crank has written to the Inter-Ocean as to what should be done with these defendants, horrifying you by the recital as he did—what does the newspaper say? That the man who wrote it was as bad as an Anarchist; that we are here to maintain the law, not break it. And that can be said of every newspaper in this city. There never has been in the history of America, in the world, such unanimity of sentiment as has prevailed through the length and breadth of this country, not only as to the crime itself and the perpetrators, but as to the perpetrators having a fair trial. And why, especially, has there been so much talk about a fair trial in this case? Because every honest, country-loving American citizen knew that his country’s life was at stake, and the only thing to do was to demonstrate the strength of the law by a fair trial, which the defendants have had.”
Mr. Grinnell at this point went into a very lengthy discussion of the law in the case. He showed conclusively that in a conspiracy the men who had advised and abetted the commission of the crime were fully as guilty as the man who had actually made himself the instrument of their deed. Inasmuch as the instructions given by the court to the jury are really a concise and complete statement of the points of law which Mr. Grinnell and the other attorneys for the State urged, I have taken the liberty to omit that part of the address.
Coming to the facts in the case, Mr. Grinnell, in his examination of the attempt made by the defense to impeach Gilmer’s testimony, said:
“A few days, gentlemen, after the Haymarket riot, for a whole week, as is plain from the testimony in this case, and from Captain Schaack, there was not the least particle of knowledge or a suspicion, great as had been the crime that was committed there—there was not a suspicion that it was any farther-reaching than the result of these repeated inflammatory speeches which our city had listened to for years. But the magnificent efforts of Schaack, without my knowledge at that time, got the leading-string which led to the conspiracy. Then it was, for the first time, that we knew of Schnaubelt, or that we knew or suspected that a conspiracy existed at all. I confess here, gentlemen, a weakness; because, whatever may be the instincts of the prosecutor, as they say, I have not been so long in this office as to be callous to human sentiments and to humanity, and I have not yet become so hardened that I believe everybody accused of a crime is guilty. I hope in the prosecution of my duty, and in this office, that that time will never come. When we had Spies under arrest, I confess to you that then, and after it was developed that a conspiracy existed—I confess the weakness—that I did not suppose that a man living in our community would enter into a conspiracy so hellish and damnable as the proof showed, and our investigations subsequently showed, he had entered into; and therefore, notwithstanding Gilmer’s statement to us so frequently, Spies was not shown to him and not identified.
“Honesty of purpose is the only thing that will determine, in every way, the right from the wrong.
“It may sound to you a little out of place for me to say here that the only mistake I have made—the only mistake that has been pointed out to you that I have made—and I frankly confess it was a mistake—was the suggestion in my opening about the bomb-thrower. We knew the facts. There was no law compelling me to make any statement. I might have proceeded with the proof, if I desired, without any opening statement. I did make an opening. I undertook to make it fairly and frankly and broad. I was afraid of wearying you, as I was weary myself, from the days and days that we had been working here in getting a jury, and the anxiety under which I labored. I said in that opening that we would show to you who threw that bomb. I said in that opening that we would show that the man left the wagon, lighted the match and threw the bomb. That was not absolutely correct. I should have said that the man who came from the wagon, assisted the bomb-thrower, as the proof shows, and who we knew came from the wagon, was in that group, and that the bomb was thrown by a man whom we would show to you.
“Gentlemen, let me proceed, as fast as I can, in the discussion of another branch of this case. The gentlemen upon the other side have said to you deliberately, for the purpose of gaining some favor in your eyes for their clients, that this is a plain, simple case of murder, and that we have no right to discuss anything or talk about anything except that which occurred at the Haymarket meeting. They read some law to you, yesterday, upon that proposition. It was inapplicable, and was manifestly so. There never was a murder committed in the world, be it treasonable murder or the murder for mere gain, but what the trial of the perpetrator meant an investigation of the life of the man who committed the murder. What had been his utterances? What has he said? Has he threatened life? Has he talked against a system represented by police? Has he advised the use of dynamite? Has he advised the use of poison? Has he advised the use of the pistol, the rifle, the musket, to accomplish his end? Those are legitimate sources of investigation. And further than that, as the gentlemen well know, you can go back in those declarations for years and years, and there is no statute of limitation against threats, when a repeated threat results in the deed threatened.
“On the lake front, at the different halls in the city of Chicago, at these Communistic or Socialistic halls, as the gentlemen called them—they are Anarchistic halls; don’t let us have any mistake about names and titles—in all these months and years there has been openly preached to the citizens of this city treason and murder by these defendants. Why? To bring about a social revolution. And these humanitarians, these God-like men, these defendants who have the similitude of Christ—peace—have openly talked murder in our streets. I think it ought to have been stopped before. I think when they made the utterance from the lake front, or any other spot in the city of Chicago, that they should have been snatched by policemen and taken to the station and fined for disorderly conduct, as that would be as far as they could go, except under the common-law rule which provides that if they had advised murder then they could have been punished for such advice. We know more law to-day than we did—I do, I am very glad to say.”