Following this, Mr. Grinnell took up the case against each of the conspirators as follows:
“Why was Engel preparing for the purchase of a large amount of arms? That has not been disputed. There is testimony in this case that Engel not later than last winter, and perhaps in the spring, negotiated for a large amount of arms, with his daughter present. His daughter has not been placed upon the stand to deny that fact. Why? He was not a dealer in arms. It could have been denied if not true. He is a keeper of a toy-store, it appears, over on Milwaukee Avenue. These belligerent humanitarians, these men whom Black would have you surround and cover with garlands—these are the men that we have demonstrated before you have been buying arms and preparing for years for something. Why was it that Parsons at another place, no later than last winter, or late in the fall, also negotiated for a large amount of arms? Has he denied it? He has been on the witness-stand. Why did he negotiate for arms? For humanitarian purposes? Why, gentlemen, to dispose of the bloodhounds, the police, the capitalists. That has been their cry. Their cry on the lake front and everywhere has been that same treasonable, infamous cry. Is that the only place they have spoken? Their halls are all over the city. Look at the testimony of Johnson, the detective, on that subject. The only testimony against Johnson, the only syllable in this proof against Pinkerton’s detective who is called Johnson, or Jansen, is Foster’s—that is all, except that Fielden said, as I remember, that the man O’Brien, in whose presence Johnson said Fielden made the remark about a little dynamite in his pocket, was not here, and that therefore he did not say it. Why, Fielden had been saying it for years—he had been talking it day after day and Sunday after Sunday on the lake shore.
“He had been talking it year in and year out. He had been speaking for dynamite and demanding its use by the workingmen, and advising them to arm themselves with it for months and years. Foster said that Johnson is not to be believed because he is a detective, and he delivered a very pleasant lecture on that subject. I presume he has delivered it in every important trial that he has ever been in. It is the ordinary language, the usual philippic against detectives, I suppose. I never saw a detective on the witness-stand that commended himself so favorably to the honest consideration of any listener as did Johnson. And after he had withstood that severe, critical and exasperating cross-examination of Foster, he still stood there a monument of strength to the truth which he had uttered. He had said nothing, gentlemen, but what had been in the public press for years about these utterances; and they have not denied a single syllable of his testimony. I suppose then, gentlemen, from that follows another proposition—that we, in the city of Chicago and elsewhere, must suffer murder, must be robbed, our friends killed, our houses invaded, law set at defiance, because it would be unfortunate to have anybody convicted who was guilty on the testimony of the detective. Foster said there never was any great murder trial in the world but what there is a detective in it. That may be so. The peculiarity of this murder trial and the detective is this—that this report was made from day to day by the detective to his principals, and by them to citizens, long before this murder. The detective that Foster pictures is the one who after the act goes back to make up a case. This was making the case without thinking that it would ever take place, and the actual written statements made by him from night to night and from day to day were here in court; and if they were not, the fact has not been denied, and these men have been on the stand. Why didn’t they deny it? Did any of them deny the existence of the armed group and the marching backward and forward and the explanation of the dynamite cans at Greif’s Hall? No; none of them denied it. They would have denied it if it had not been so absolutely strong in its proof. The written evidence, the handwriting on the wall, was against these men.
“But, not content, these revolutionists, these traitors, these men who have committed treason—I thank again the gentleman for the word—these men who have committed treason are not content with confining their power and influence to the small limits of Cook County, but Spies goes to Grand Rapids and there gives utterance to these same treasonable sentences; and there is no doubt that other proselytes of the humanitarian crowd were at other places in the country doing the same thing. It seems that Parsons was at Cincinnati Sunday or Saturday before the Haymarket difficulty. Was he down there for the same purpose that Spies was at Grand Rapids? And at Grand Rapids, what did Spies say? He said that the social revolution must come, would come when there were great numbers of laboring men out of employment, and foreshadowed the difficulties in the ensuing year, in 1886. The great things that he was to accomplish then were foreshadowed. ‘But,’ said Moulton to him,—the other witness heard the conversation,—‘they will strangle you like a lot of snakes. It will be murder.’ ‘Oh no; oh no. No murder about this. We are humanitarians. No murder. We will succeed. It will be revolution, and I, great Spies, will be the second Washington of America.’ The second Washington of America! ‘But if you fail?’ says Moulton. ‘Of course, if we fail, that is another thing; but we ain’t going to fail.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because hundreds of thousands of laboring men will be out of employment all over the United States, and they have the power.’ That is the friend of the laboring man, the Anarchist and friend of the laboring man, advocating the destruction of property to advance the interests of the laboring man. It would be a great benefit to me, with the very little property that I have, to have it destroyed; it would enrich me so at once!
“But that is not all—and there has been no dispute about that interview with Moulton, not a syllable of dispute about that interview from any source. Counsel did not even undertake to cross-examine Moulton. His intelligence was such, he was so clear-headed and concise in what he uttered, that they dropped him. What was all this for? That meant preparation and threats toward what? Toward murder, the social revolution—and it was murder. That is why this is competent evidence. That is why the utterances of these men are material and necessary. That is why the proof is overpowering.
“There is no use in my giving you the details of these speeches from day to day. They have made indignant every man who has listened to them or read them. They have caused other things—they have caused bloodshed and riot.
“Foster says to you that there is no difficulty about the black flag; that that is a flag they use over in Europe to march around with, showing their humanitarian desires, or that they are hungry—that that is what it means. It does not mean that here. They were going to march down Michigan Avenue under the black flag and strike terror to the hearts of the capitalists. Didn’t Fielden and Spies and Parsons and all that gang understand that when the valiant crowd would march up Michigan Avenue under the black flag, it meant death, no quarter, piracy?
“But that is not all. The Board of Trade meeting occurs, and there the black flag and the red flag were carried. The article has been read to you, and it is unnecessary to go into that again. And there they say that that meeting was copiously supplied with nitro-glycerine pills, or something of that kind. They did not get at the Board of Trade, but had to march clear around it, within a block of it, and then vented their spite—aroused by their difficulties, vented their spite in speeches from the Arbeiter-Zeitung office that night, commending their valorous deeds and acts, only saying that they were preparing for them, declaring: ‘We will wait for some other time, when we are ready for the police.’ They did not expect any police that night. They thought they would march right down. The police began to wake up.
“Gentlemen, the red flag has passed in our streets enough. At that meeting which they comment so much upon in the Alarm and the Arbeiter-Zeitung, representing its peculiarities, its honor, and its humanitarian influences, they suggest that the red flag that was carried there, and carried by women, that it is the flag of universal liberty, and it is so described here on the witness-stand. Ah, gentlemen, there is but one flag of liberty in this land, and that is the stars and stripes. That flag is planted on our soil, and planted to stay, if you have the courage to carry out the law. It is a plant of liberty.
The blades of heroes fence it round;
Where’er it springs is holy ground.
From tower and dome its glories spread;
It waves where lonely sentries tread.