August Spies Argues in Favor of Self-Defense for the Working Classes

Background: This article was published in the January edition of The Alarm. An anarchist newspaper distributed in Chicago during the 1880s, The Alarm was founded by Albert and Lucy Parsons and became the most prominent English-language anarchist publication at the time. August Spies, the essay’s author, had immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1872, where he joined the Socialist Labor Party. In the article, Spies argues that laborers had the right to protect themselves from police violence. The year after the article appeared, Spies became involved in protests that led to the bombing at Chicago’s Haymarket Square, where he was arrested, tried, and later executed. The Alarm’s editor, Albert Parsons, also was convicted and hung at the same time as Spies.

THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

The conspiracy of the ruling against working classes in 1877—the breaking up of the monster meeting on Market Square, the brutal assault upon a gathering of furniture workers in Vorwart’s Turner Hall, the murder of Tessman and the general clubbing and shooting down of peaceably inclined wage-workers by the blood-hounds of “law and order”—greatly enraged the producers of this city and also convinced them that they had to do something for their future protection and defense. The result was the organization of an armed proletarian corps, known as the “Lehr Und Wehr Verein.” About one and half-years later this “corps” had grown so immensely that it numbered over 1,000 well-equipped and well-drilled men.

Such an organization the “good citizens” of our “good city” considered a menace to the commonwealth, public safety and good order, as one might easily imagine, and they concluded that "something had to be done." And very soon after something was done. The State legislature passed a new "militia law," under which it became a punishable offense for any body of men, other than those patented by the governor and chosen as the guardian of "peace" to assemble with arms, drill or parade the streets. This law was expressly aimed at the "L. & W. V.," who as a matter of course, did not enjoy the sublime confidence and favor of "His Excellency."

Source: Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial evidence book. People's Exhibit 128.The Alarm (Newspaper) article, "The Right to Bear Arms," 1885 Jan. 9. https://www.chicagohistoryresources.org/hadc/transcript/exhibits/X101-150/X1280.htm