Henry George
and the Chicago Haymarket Trials
Benjamin R. Tucker
[Reprinted from Liberty, Vol. XII, No.9,
November, 1896,
with the original title "Henry George, Traitor"]
The present oft recalls the past, and events of the recent political
campaign forcibly reminded me of the shame of 1887 and the shameful
part therein of one whose infamy shall not be forgotten. To the end
that it may not, I purpose here to link the present to the past by a
simple statement of facts.
In May, 1886, occurred the now historic tragedy of the Chicago
Haymarket, when a bomb was thrown and policemen were killed and
wounded. It is needless to review the details. As a result eight men -
Spies, Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Lingg, Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe --
were arrested, tried, and convicted of murder. All but Neebe were
condemned to death; Neebe was sentenced to a long term of
imprisonment. The trial was a long one, and after it months were
occupied in attempts to secure a new one and to save the lives of the
condemned. During the spring, summer, and fall of 1887 the matter
filled the public mind. Public opinion, inflamed by a prostituted
press and cowards in high place, was at fever-pitch against the
victims. Efforts were made to secure the intervention of influential
persons in their behalf. But few responded to the call. Perhaps the
most notable among the few, because he risked the most and because his
aid was least expected, was William Dean Howells. However brilliant
the literary fame that he may leave behind him, his fame as a man,
resting chiefly on the brave and simple appeal that he then made for
justice, will far outshine it, and I am sure that to him this act is
the most precious of his career. But because he was almost alone among
the mighty his appeal was in vain. The supreme court of Illinois, in a
long and labored opinion, sustained the verdict of the lower court;
the supreme court of the United States gave an adverse decision
regarding the points of law upon which an appeal to that tribunal had
been taken; the governor of Illinois listened with ears of stone to
all prayers for clemency; and on November Eleventh, Eighteen Hundred
and Eighty-Seven, Lingg having previously taken his own life, Spies,
Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged, the commutation of the
sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life-imprisonment being the only
crumb of comfort flung to an enlightened minority hungering for
justice.
Among the mighty in that day of trial, in that hour of national
dishonor when every individual, especially every individual of
prominence, had to choose between the path of shame and the path of
glory, it is not unfair to include Mr. Henry George. A man of
unquestioned ability; a writer of almost unparalleled lucidity and
force; a public speaker whom vast audience acclaimed with apparently
unquenchable enthusiasm; a reformer who, in completely winning the
love of the masses, had not failed to attach himself to many men of
wealth and power among the classes; and withal, a man whose honesty
only a few of the more clear sighted had then begun to doubt, - to him
perhaps more than to any other single person did lovers of liberty and
friends of labor confidently look for willing and effective aid and
leadership through and out of a crisis pregnant with results beyond
all human vision. Less than a year before, he had astonished New York
and the entire nation by rolling up a vote of 68,000 as an independent
candidate for the mayoralty of this city.
With the prestige that that event had given him, with his command of
popular attention, and with his wonderful power of advocacy, it was
not impossible that he should turn the tide of opinion, and compel
authority to comply with the demand of a people awakened by his voice
to a realization of the horror that was impending. At the very least
he could have tried. For the hope that he would make the attempt he
had given reason - so it is said, though I cannot vouch for the
statement - by sending a message of encouragement to the men in their
cells at Chicago. That at the time this message is said to have been
sent he believed them to be innocent victims is on record in black and
white over his own signature. At that time he had not been nominated
for the office of secretary of State for New York. This nomination
came to him some months later, - in the summer or early fall of 1887.
His remarkable campaign of 1886 had inspired him with insane hope of
speedy political victory. In January, 1887, he had started his weekly
paper, the "Standard," and by this and other means he was
bending all his energies to the creation of the new political party.
He claimed that he would poll 250,000 votes for secretary of State,
and that with hard work he could be elected.
The month of September, 1887, found him in the thick of this mad
campaign. It was in that month, too, that the Illinois supreme court
filed its opinion sustaining the verdict against Spies and his
comrades. The time for action had arrived. Appeals to Henry George
began to pour in upon him from friends of the condemned men and from
readers of the "Standard." He was in a dilemma, - one of
those embarrassing dilemmas which men afflicted with the political
itch have so often to confront. What should he do? Should he spring to
the side of these innocent victims, upon whose fate turned the
question of free speech in America, and thereby absolutely ruin his
prospect of immediate political advancement, or should he continue in
his mad struggle to attain the goal of his ambition, and leave the
innocent to die? For some weeks he doggedly maintained a policy of
silence. But the demand that he should take a stand became too loud to
be ignored. And it was under this pressure that at last, in the "Standard"
of October 8, 1887, appeared on its first page, over the signature of
the editor himself, the article that at once damned Henry George
forever in the eyes of every decent and unbiased man. In substance Mr.
George declared that, although he formerly looked upon the condemned
men as innocent, he now believed them guilty of murder, because the
supreme court of Illinois has so pronounced them, and that settled it.
So well-nigh incredible is it that a man of Henry George's
intelligence and boasted mental independence should ever have given
utterance to a conclusion so foolish and so slavish that to-day, nine
years after the fact, if you venture to attribute it to him in talking
with one of his admirers, the chances are ten to one that you will be
vehemently told that Mr. George never could have taken, and never did
take, such a position, and that you ought to be ashamed of yourself
for so misrepresenting a noble man. That there may be no mistake about
the matter, then, let me quote his exact words:
"There is no ground for asking executive clemency in
behalf of the Chicago Anarchists as a matter of right. An unlawful
and murderous deed was committed in Chicago the penalty of which, by
the laws of the State of Illinois, is death. Seven men were tried on
the charge of being accessory to the crime, and, after a long trial,
were convicted. The case was appealed to the supreme court of the
State of Illinois, and that body, composed of seven judges, removed,
both in time and place, from the excitement which may have been
supposed to have affected public opinion in Chicago during the first
trial, have, after an elaborate examination of the evidence and the
law, unanimously confirmed the sentence.
"That seven judges of the highest court of Illinois, men
accustomed to weigh evidence and to pass upon judicial rulings,
should, after a full examination of the testimony and the record,
and with the responsibility of life and death resting upon them,
unanimously sustain the verdict and the sentence, is inconsistent
with the idea that the Chicago Anarchists were condemned on
insufficient evidence."
Unmistakable, is it not? No room for misrepresentation here. So clear
is the meaning that every person who read the sentence which I have
italicized, and who was capable of judging its author impartially, in
his inmost heart put Henry George down as a liar and a coward. Some
went farther, I among them; and put him down in print as such. The
lamented William Morris, for instance, who was then editing the "Commonweal,"
found nothing less that capital letters adequate to the branding of
George as TRAITOR, in a pithy paragraph of four or five lines, signed,
if my memory serves, by the poet himself.
Nine years have passed since then, during which the man thus branded
has made no acknowledgment of error, uttered no expression of regret,
given no sign of repentance. But meantime significant things have
happened.
Let us move down a little from the remoter past toward the present.
In the fall of 1892, John P. Altgeld was elected governor of
Illinois.
In January of 1893 he was inaugurated, and before he had been in
office many months he granted what the law calls a pardon, and he
called to his side, as trusted friend and counselor, another judge of
one the high courts of the State. I suppose that I reveal no secret in
naming him, - Judge Samuel P. McConnell of Chicago. Together they went
over the record of the famous case. At a certain stage in their
examination, or at its end, -- I am not sure which, -- Judge McConnell
said to the governor:
"Though I think that these men should be pardoned,
and though I ask you to pardon them, I desire to express to you, as
your friend, my conviction that, if you pardon them, you will
thereby seriously injure your political future."
"Damn it, Sam!" replied Altgeld, "if these men were
unjustly convicted, I'll set 'em free, though it should prove my
political death."
And so the pardon issued. It was a long, convincing, bold, and
scathing document, probably the most merciless message of mercy ever
penned.
With unanswerable evidence and argument Governor Altgeld assailed the
guilty conspirators against free speech, and, far from bowing to the
decree of the Illinois supreme court, he ripped it completely up the
back. As a result he has ever since been the target for the abuse and
ridicule of the entire capitalistic press. Nearly four years have
elapsed since the document was promulgated, during which its author
has been careful to improve every opportunity to intensify the hatred
of which he is the object among the privileged classes.
And now we come down to the present time. On Saturday evening,
October 17, 1896, Governor Altgeld made a notable speech at Cooper
Union in this city. The chief objects of this speech were condemnation
of government by injunction and demonstration of the fallibility of
courts of justice. One minute before the opening of the meeting and
the entrance of Governor Altgeld, Henry George crossed the platform
and took a conspicuous seat. The Single Taxers present rose to their
opportunity, and made the hall ring with their applause. Any other man
than Henry George, in a meeting in no sense his, would have
acknowledged the greeting with a bow and then steadfastly kept his
seat. But not he. Rising and crossing the platform with the pompous
strut with which every one who has ever seen him parade before an
admiring audience is familiar, he stood at the desk the incarnation of
egotism, and with characteristic impudence began a speech. Before he
could utter a half-dozen sentences he was cut short in the middle of
one of them by the playing of the band in greeting to Altgeld. I
confess that I do not like the looks of the Illinois governor. He is
distinctly a disappointment to the eye. Yet I could not help
contrasting, and greatly to his advantage, this slight figure of a
modest, retiring man, free from any trace of vanity and plainly bored
by the long-kept-up applause, with the swelling turkey-cock whose
strut had just been so ingloriously cut short.
After some introductory speeches, the hero of the evening rose to
address the audience. And then was witnessed the astounding spectacle
of the man who, nine years before, had given his specific sanction to
the legal murder of innocent men, that he might not damage a political
future which, though in reality the baseless fabric of a dream, was in
his eyes a shining certainty, rising with both hands lifted in honor
of the man who, four years before, without the slightest hesitation
and as if the most ordinary decency commanded it, had cast into the
balance a political prospect which only the most ambitious of
statesmen could have despised, in order to do all that lay within the
bounds of human power to right the wrongs of persecuted innocence. An
astounding spectacle, I say. Yet it would have been an inspiring one,
had those who saw it been able to look upon it as an honest effort at
atonement. But such it emphatically was not. It was only too evident
that the man who had once endeavored to conceal his infamy behind the
extraordinary and pusillanimous plea that a unanimous court can do no
wrong was applauding the man who holds no court sacred, not to
repudiate his past, but to make the people forget it, - that he had
come to Cooper Union not to confess that he had been a coward, but to
exploit in his own behalf the bravery of another. In vain did I try to
imagine what went on in Henry George's mind as he sat listening to
these rebuking words as they fell from the lips of a former occupant
of the bench:
"I say to my countrymen that there cannot be in a
republic any institution exempt for criticism, and that, when any
institution is permitted to assume that attitude, it will destroy
republican government. The judicial branch of the government is just
as much subject to the criticism of the American people as are the
legislative and executive branches... The judges of our federal
courts are as honest as other men and no more so. They have the same
passions and prejudices that other men have, and just as liable to
make mistakes and to move in the wrong direction as other men are,
and the safety of the republic not only permits, but actually
requires, that the action of the courts should be honestly and
thoroughly scanned and freely criticized... The mere fact that the
supreme court has all through its career repeatedly reversed its own
decisions shows its fallibility... The decision of the supreme court
does not in any case become the rule of political action the
correctness of which the voter dare not question."
As Henry George listened to this simple truth, which the most
ordinary mind must accept and which every honest mind openly
acknowledges, did he reflect that he had once declared the supreme
court incapable of error and its decision beyond question? Probably.
It is my belief that he regrets his course in 1887 most bitterly. Not
that he is in the least ashamed of it; not that he would not repeat
it, if he felt as sure as he did then of a political gain in prospect;
but simply that he realizes that he made a fool of himself, not
gaining what he hoped to gain, and losing what he now would like to
have, - the honor which might have been his, but which another has
bravely won.
I have no use for repentance. I regard it as a deplorable waste of
precious time and valuable material that any man, no matter who,
should don sackcloth and ashes. But none the less am I certain that no
frank and sincere man, realizing with shame that he has been guilty of
an enormous folly in a matter of vital public interest, will neglect
for a moment to expose his heart to public view. And the fact that
during the last nine years Henry George has sought no opportunity to
lay his heart bare assures me that the liar and coward and traitor of
1887 is, in his heart, a liar and coward and traitor still. So that
which he refuses to lay bare I strip. The corruption thus made visible
is not a pleasant sight, but it is a useful one, and I am determined
that it shall never vanish by concealment. My hope, rather, is to fan
the flame of a purifying indignation that shall dissipate the
pestilence forever.
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