Governor Altgeld Pardons the Haymarket Protesters

Background: On June 26, 1893, Illinois governor John P. Altgeld pardoned protesters who had been found guilty of inciting violence during a pro-labor protest in Haymarket Square seven years earlier. Violence at Haymarket followed several days of agitation by anarchists and workers fighting for an eight-hour workday and other demands. After police moved to forcibly suppress the protests, a bomb exploded in Haymarket, killing one officer, Mathias Degan. Following a trial, eight men were convicted as accessories to murder after the fact; seven of them were sentenced to be executed and one received a life sentence. Upon appeal, two of the men had their sentences changed to life imprisonment. Four were hung in 1887 in punishment for their alleged crimes and a fifth committed suicide the night before his execution. Upon later review, Governor Altgeld issued pardons for the three surviving men – Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab – all currently serving the seventh year of their lifetime prison sentence. In a public statement, excerpted here, Altgeld explained his decision to pardon the survivors and detailed the ways in which he had determined that the indictments, trial, executions, and prison terms were a miscarriage of justice.

On the night of May 4, 1886, a public meeting was held on Haymarket Square in Chicago; there were from 800 to 1,000 people present, nearly all being laboring men. There had been trouble, growing out of the effort to introduce an eight-hour day, resulting in some collisions with the police, in one of which several laboring people were killed, and this meeting was called as a protest against alleged police brutality. . . . The meeting was orderly and was attended by the mayor, who remained until the crowd began to disperse and then went away. As soon as Capt. John Bonfield, of the police department, learned that the mayor had gone, he took a detachment of police and hurried to the meeting for the purpose of dispersing the few that remained, and as the police approached the place of meeting a bomb was thrown by some unknown person, which exploded and wounded many and killed several policemen, among the latter being one Mathias Degan. . . . The prosecution could not discover who had thrown the bomb and could not bring the really guilty man to justice, and, as some of the men indicted were not at the Haymarket meeting and had nothing to do with it, the prosecution was forced to proceed on the theory that the men indicted were guilty of murder because it was claimed they had at various times in the past uttered and printed incendiary and seditious language, practically advising the killing of policemen, of Pinkerton men and others acting in that capacity, and that they were therefore responsible for the murder of Mathias Degan. The public was greatly excited and after a prolonged trial all of the defendants were found guilty.

No matter what the defendants were charged with, they were entitled to a fair trial, and no greater danger could possibly threaten our institutions than to have the courts of justice run wild or give way to popular clamor, and when the trial judge in this case ruled that a relative of one of the men who was killed was a competent juror, and this after the man had candidly stated that he was deeply prejudiced and that his relationship caused him to feel more strongly than he otherwise might, and when in scores of instances he ruled that men who candidly declared that they believed the defendants to be guilty; that this was a deep conviction and would influence their verdict, and that it would require strong evidence to convince them that the defendants were innocent, when in all these instances the trial judge ruled that these men were competent jurors, simply because they had, under his adroit manipulation, been led to say that they believed they could try the case fairly on the evidence, then the proceedings lost all semblance of a fair trial. . . .

It is further shown here that much of the evidence given at the trial was a pure fabrication; that some of the prominent police officials in their zeal, not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into prison and threatening them with torture if they refused to swear to anything desired, but that they offered money and employment to those who would consent to do this.

These charges are of a personal character, and while they seem to be sustained by the record of the trial and the papers before me and tend to show that the trial was not fair, I do not care to discuss this feature of the case any farther, because it is not necessary. I am convinced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case for the reasons already given, and I, therefore, grant an absolute pardon to Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab this 26th day of June, 1893.”

JOHN P. ALTGELD,

Governor of Illinois.

Source: "Reasons for Pardoning," Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haymarket/pardon.html#REASONS_FOR_PARDONING.