Haymarket affair: Difference between revisions

Among supporters of the labor movement in the United States and abroad and others, the trial was widely believed to have been unfair, and even a serious [[miscarriage of justice]]. Prominent people including novelist [[William Dean Howells]], celebrated attorney [[Clarence Darrow]],<ref>John A. Farrell, ''Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned'' (New York: Doubleday, 2011), p. 5 and passim.</ref> poet and playwright [[Oscar Wilde]], playwright [[George Bernard Shaw]], and poet [[William Morris]] strongly condemned it. On June 26, 1893, Illinois governor [[John Peter Altgeld]], the progressive governor of Illinois, himself a German immigrant, signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab,<ref>{{Cite news |date=June 27, 1893 |title=Anarchists Pardoned |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19766055/3_men_pardoned_for_haymarket_bombing/ |newspaper=Port Huron Daily Times |location=Port Huron, Michigan |page=1 |via=[[Newspapers.com]] |access-date=May 4, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627173145/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19766055/3_men_pardoned_for_haymarket_bombing/ |archive-date=June 27, 2018 |url-status=live }} {{Open access}}</ref> calling them victims of "hysteria, packed juries, and a biased judge" and noting that the state "has never discovered who it was that threw the bomb which killed the policeman, and the evidence does not show any connection whatsoever between the defendants and the man who threw it".<ref>Quoted in Stanley Turkel, ''Heroes of the American Reconstruction: Profiles of Sixteen Educators'' (McFarland, 2009) p. 121.</ref> Altgeld also faulted the city of Chicago for failing to hold Pinkerton guards responsible for repeated use of lethal violence against striking workers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Morn |title=The Eye That Never Sleeps |page=99 |isbn=0-253-32086-0 |year=1982 |publisher=Indiana University Press }} On April 9, 1885, Pinkertons shot and killed an elderly man at the McCormick Harvester Company Works in Chicago. On October 19, 1886, they shot and killed a man in Chicago's packinghouse district. [[Labor spies#A historical overview|More info]].</ref> Altgeld's actions concerning labor were used to defeat his reelection.<ref>[http://www.chicagohistoryresources.org/dramas/act5/absolutePardon/theFriendOfMadDogs_f.htm ''ACT V Raising the dead: Absolute Pardon,''] Chicago Historical Society (2000)</ref><ref>[http://www.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governors-bios/page_illinois/col2-content/main-content-list/title_altgeld_john.html ''Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld''] National Governors Association (2011).</ref><ref>[http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_debs_bio_altgeld.html ''The Debs Case: Labor, Capital, and the Federal Courts of the 1890s, Biographies, John Peter Altgeld''] Federal Judicial Center.</ref>

 

 

Christopher Thale writes in the ''[[Encyclopedia of Chicago]]'' that lacking credible evidence regarding the bombing, "...the prosecution focused on the writings and speeches of the defendants."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=Thale|first=Christopher|title=Haymarket and May Day|url=http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Chicago|publisher=Chicago History Museum, Newberry Library and Northwestern University|access-date=April 1, 2012}}</ref> He further notes that the conspiracy charge was legally unprecedented, the judge was "partisan," and all the jurors admitted prejudice against the defendants. Historian Carl Smith writes, "The visceral feelings of fear and anger surrounding the trial ruled out anything but the pretense of justice right from the outset."<ref>{{cite web|last=Smith|first=Carl|title=Act III: Toils of the Law|url=http://www.chicagohistoryresources.org/dramas/act3/act3.htm|work=The Dramas of Haymarket|publisher=Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University|access-date=December 30, 2017}}</ref> Smith notes that scholars have long considered the trial a "notorious" "miscarriage of justice".<ref>{{cite web|last=Smith|first=Carl|title=Introduction|url=http://www.chicagohistoryresources.org/dramas/overview/main.htm|work=The Dramas of Haymarket|publisher=Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University|access-date=December 30, 2017}}</ref> In a review somewhat more critical of the defendants, historian Jon Teaford concludes that "[t]he tragedy of Haymarket is the American justice system did not protect the damn fools who most needed that protection... It is the damn fools who talk too much and too wildly who are most in need of protection from the state."<ref name="Teaford" /> Historian [[Timothy Messer-Kruse]] revisited the digitized trial transcript and argued that the proceedings were fair for their time, a challenge to the historical consensus that the trial was a travesty.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Mann |first1=Leslie |title=Reworking infamous Haymarket trial |work=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=2011-09-14 |url=http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09-14/entertainment/ct-ent-0915-museum-general-haymarket-20110915_1_separate-trials-haymarket-square-haymarket-incident |access-date=2017-11-01 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>