Forgotten History - Friday, July 14, 2006
Governor John Peter Altgeld Pardons The Haymarket Prisoners
Exiled 40 years in the political wilderness, a major party
triumphs, led by a self-made real estate tycoon who
captures the governor's office. Within six months, ignoring
threats to his own and his party's future, this leader
moves to redress one of the most shameful injustices in
the state's history.
A good scenario for a movie, perhaps with Frank Capra
directing, Jimmy Stewart playing the governor and Lionel
Barrymore as a bigoted, reactionary newspaper editor out
to ruin the governor. However, this is not a script treat-
ment but reality--events that occurred a century ago in
Springfield, Illinois when Governor John Peter Altgeld
dared to defy the combined financial, political, and
journalistic powers of the state simply to do the right
thing.
Today, the notion of freeing three innocent men from the
jail cells where they had languished for seven years seems
not only logical but popular. But when Altgeld boldly
scrawled his name across the pardons for Samuel Fielden,
Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab on June 26, 1893, he
unleashed upon himself a torrent of political and personal
abuse from such "respectable" organs as the Chicago Tribune
and the New York Times that has rarely been matched.
As surely as the term "communist" during the McCarthy era
was enough to brand an individual undeserving of simple
justice and constitutional rights, affixing the description
"anarchist" to one in late 19th-Century America made them
fair game for an uneasy and vindictive ruling class that
in Chicago and other places controlled the courts and the
press.
Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab were the survivors of the
Haymarket martyrs--originally a group of eight men who
were charged with murder following the explosion of a bomb
at a Chicago labor rally on May 4, 1886 that killed several
policemen. None of the eight was ever tied to the bomb,
some were not even at the rally when the explosion occurred
and the bombthrower was never found. But the Chicago
establishment, led by Joseph Medill's Tribune, saw the
incident as a chance to wipe out the leadership of the
city's radical labor movement and send a message to all
who would seek just wages, decent working conditions, and
reduced hours for working men and women.
In a trial that Altgeld would later expose as riddled by
abuses from jury-packing to blatantly biased rulings from
the judge, the eight were convicted on evidence consisting
of nothing more than popular passion and prejudice. Albert
Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer
died on the gallows. Louis Lingg committed suicide in his
jail cell. Weak- willed Gov. Richard Ogelsby, who privately
admitted the innocence of the men, worked up enough spine
to reduce the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life in
prison. Neebe, who even the state's prosecutor confided was
innocent, received a sentence of 15 years.
Those enjoying increasingly concentrated wealth in Chicago
had little patience with working people, especially those
of foreign birth, who had the gall to stand up for their
rights. Such activities were seen as a threat to the free
market, the individual's right to work 10 to 12 hours a day
for a pittance.
Among the men on the make in Chicago, however, was a German
immigrant and attorney who had a talent for real estate
speculation. A wandering youth that included stints as a
schoolteacher, a Union soldier in the Civil War, and a
prosecuting attorney in Missouri eventually led John Peter
Altgeld to America's great market arena. His speculations
paid off and his wealth steadily mounted, leaving him more
time to pursue his political ambitions.
Clues to Altgeld's emergence from the scramble for riches
with his sense of humanity intact can be found in his
rugged background and foreign birth. He was an outsider
and never forgot that there were those who would bar his
way simply because of place of birth.
Though defying objective documentation, there is another
clue to Altgeld's later actions in his official portrait.
It reveals a bearded, medium-sized man with short hair
combed forward. Nothing particularly stands out save the
eyes, just as they do in surviving photographs. Altgeld's
eyes shine with a softness, conveying a sympathy and
compassion that animates the soul.
Yet, Altgeld was also a calculating, ambitious politician.
Failing to gain election to the U.S. Senate by the
Democratic-controlled state legislature in 1890, he set
his sights on the governor's mansion. Two years later,
putting $100,000 of his own fortune into the race, he led
Illinois Democrats back into the governor's office they
had not won in 40 years. It was a sweep of state offices,
the Presidency, and many congressional seats that promised
bright things for the state's beleaguered Democracy.
Almost from the time the four Haymarket martyrs died, some
in the Chicago business community began having second
thoughts about the trial. Labor organizations, too, were
pressing for justice for the survivors. Many eminent and
respectable citizens were hoping the new governor would do
the right thing, though more than a few were like former
U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull, whose fear of losing corporate
legal business may have been the reason he refused to go
public with his support for pardons.
Altgeld's inauguration brought expectations from labor and
reformers in general that, finally, justice would be done.
On the other hand, there were those in powerful positions
who would accept no acknowledgment of error, who stood
ready to defame anyone who tried.
Aware of the dangers, Altgeld confided to Clarence Darrow,
who was among those pressing him for the pardons, "If I
conclude to pardon those men it will not meet with the
approval that you expect; let me tell you that from that
day I will be a dead man politically."
Slightly more than a month before he signed the pardons,
Altgeld addressed the graduating seniors at the University
of Illinois, seeking to reassure himself, perhaps, as much
as convince the young men and women before him.
"Let sunlight into dark places and the poisons collected
there disappear," he told them. "So with the dark places
in the government and civil affairs that are now festering
with wrong; let the sunlight of eternal truth and justice
shine on them and they will disappear.
"Wherever there is wrong; point it out to all the world,
and you can trust the people to right it; wrongs thrive
in secrecy and darkness."
Early on the morning of June 26, Altgeld determined to let
that light in and summoned an assistant secretary of state,
Brand Whitlock, later a reform mayor of Toledo, Ohio and
novelist, to his office. Before others had arrived to
begin work at the state capitol, Altgeld directed Whitlock
to prepare the pardons and affix the state seal.
Informed of the pardons, the Democratic Secretary of State
complained of the possible effect on the party's fortunes.
"No man," Altgeld replied, "has the right to allow his
ambition to stand in the way of the performance of a simple
act of justice."
Making the pardons more powerful was the fact that rather
than simple acts of executive clemency, they were
accompanied by detailed and damning evidence showing the
indictments, trial, executions, and prison terms to be a
gross miscarriage of justice.
Backed by depositions from witnesses and with unforgiving
legal logic, Altgeld clearly laid out the chain of actions
that rigged the process. The state's star witness, who
allegedly saw the whole incident, was actually--according
to the testimony of 10 prominent Chicagoans who knew him--
an "inveterate liar." The bailiff in charge of the jury
pool purposely selected men he knew would convict. The
judge allowed friends of the slain policemen on the jury
and denied defense challenges to obviously biased jurors.
Exposed for the world to see was the blatant falsehood of
the state's case and the manner in which justice had been
perverted by those with wealth and power. It was bitter
medicine, too bitter to swallow.
"Fielden's simple creed of 'Kill the law; stab the law;
throttle the law' is expanded by the Governor," declared
the Chicago Tribune. What could one expect from a man like
Altgeld, observed the Washington Post, who was, of course,
"an alien himself." The New York Times questioned Altgeld's
motivations, charging he "would have developed into an
out-and-out Anarchist if his lucky real estate speculations
had not turned the course of his natural tendencies." And
the Tribune concluded that the governor had not "a drop of
true American blood in his veins. He does not reason like
an American, does not feel like one, and consequently does
not behave like one."
Similar attacks poured in from around the country. Close
to home, Altgeld found some relief in the pages of Spring-
field's Illinois State Register and the Decatur Daily
Review which supported his stand, the Review noting that
had Altgeld not issued the pardons based on the evidence
he would have been "a coward, unfit for the position which
he occupied."
Three and a half years remained in Altgeld's term and he
continued to expose the "dark places" to the "sunlight of
eternal truth and justice." Playing a leading role in
overthrowing the callous and conservative leadership of
President Grover Cleveland in the Democratic Party, Altgeld
thrust William Jennings Bryan to the forefront and helped
lay the groundwork for his party's reformist ideology in
the 20th Century.
He never escaped the attacks of the defenders of privilege
and the status quo, whose editorial writers flayed him and
whose cartoonists mercilessly portrayed him as a torch-
bearing, wild-eyed radical. With the rest of the Democratic
ticket, he went down to defeat in 1896.
No doubt, he would be disturbed by the uniqueness of his
act of political courage. "This was the deed of a brave
heart, and it will live as such in history," one of the
men he pardoned wrote him. Altgeld likely would have
preferred it to become the norm, forgotten amid countless
similar examples of political courage.
Even his last day in office offered no escape from bitter-
ness. Triumphant Republicans denied him the normal courtesy
of a farewell address so his went undelivered. "In my
judgment no epitaph can be written upon the tomb of a
public man that will so surely win the contempt of the ages
than to say of him that he held office all of his life and
never did anything for humanity," he was prepared to say
that day.
A century later, Altgeld's action looms even larger in a
day of poll-driven politicians too often dancing to the
tune of lobbyists and campaign donors. Altgeld was no
saint. He could maneuver and demagogue and pass out jobs
and contracts with the toughest pros of his day. Behind
those eyes, though, beat a heart in tune with the
aspirations of those on the outside, a heart that hated
injustice, a heart with the courage to act.
Lucy Parsons, widow of the martyred Albert, said it best.
"He was a man before he was a politician."
--By Robert D. Sampson, Ph.D.