Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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employers did not comply. Consequently, many workers went on strike, and union

leaders organized a meeting on May 3 to assess the situation and discuss the next

move. As many as 8,000 strikers gathered near McCormick Harvesting Machine

Company to listen to various speakers including August Spies, a German Socialist

newspaper editor, who discouraged violence and encouraged the crowd t o stick

together and stay the course.

Fritz Schmidt, a Socialist member of the Central Labor Union, was much more

extreme. Schmidt urged the strikers to arm themselves and focused the wrath of

the crowd on the workers of the nearby McCormick factory that had not gone on

strike that day. These “scabs,” Schmidt said, were taking the bread from the tables

of the strikers’ families, and they deserved to be shot down. According to Schmidt,

violent revolution was the only cure for the ills of the workers, and he encouraged

them to destroy the McCormick factory and shoot policemen if they tried to stop

them.

After the speech, about 7,000 strikers headed to the McCormick factory to con-

front the strikebreakers. Coincidentally, the workers were just getting out of work

as the angry mob approached. The a ttackers grabbed stones and began hurling

576 Haymarket Riot (1886)

The police charge rioters in old Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, on May 4, 1886. The

riot occurred when a bomb exploded among a group of policemen as they attempted to

disperse a giant labor rally in the city's Haymarket Square. Eleven people died in the

incident. The illustration, which appeared in Harper's Weekly, May 15, 1886, was titled,

The Anarchists Riot in Chicago. (Library of Congress)

them at the men. Workers that had cleared the gates when the assault began ran for

their lives as a rain of stones fell all around them. However, workers that had not

made it out ran back into the building for protection. The strikers continued their

attack by destroying the glass windows of the factory with rocks and other projec-

tiles. About 12 factory guards met the approaching mob at the gates and shot into

the air to frighten them off, but the strikers pressed forward and the guards, like the

workers, were forced to retreat inside the factory. Unchecked, about 50 of the

strikers inﬁltrated the grounds, looted the gatekeeper’s house, and began banging

on the factory doors with crowbars.

At this point, a police wagon with about 12 ofﬁcers arrived on the scene and

successfull y expelled all of the strikers from the factory grounds and held the

mob at bay. The strikers hurled a steady stream of rocks at the policeman for about

10 minutes, and then began ﬁring their handguns. Amazingly, not a single police-

man was shot even though more than 500 shots were ﬁred by the angry mob.

After a few more minutes of standoff, p olice reinforcements numbering about

200 strong arrived and returned ﬁre on the crowd. The show of force killed one

striker and seriously wounded more t han a dozen o thers. The crowd quickly dis-

persed and began scrambling in all directions to escape harm. Most of the strikers

escaped unscathed, but several were arrested and charged with instigating a riot.

The eight-hour day movement had turned bloody, and fear of continued trouble

was in the air. A 21-man guard was posted at the First Infantry Armory. The army,

police, and reserve pol ice were all put on high alert. Employe rs and strike rs

remained at an impasse. Perhaps most serious of all, Spies, who had previously

advocated nonviolent tactics, had now made an about-face. Spies was furious

about recent events, and he accused the police of excessive force. Now, Spies too

encouraged strikers to arm themselves against the police.

On May 4, Spies published an editorial in his newspaper, Die Arbeiter-Zeitung,

which displayed his socialis t and ana rchi st bent and called the workers to arms.

Spies accused the business owners of gaining wealth at the expense of the masses

with the protection of the government. He asserted that history had proven that all

private property was secured and maintained by violent means. So, he challenged

the working class to rise up and take what was rightfully theirs. After all, Spies

argued, the workers had been making a very reasonable demand for an eight-

hour workday for over a yea r, but they had only been met with regulations, the

police, and the military.

According to Spies, the time had come for revenge. Terror had to be met with

terror. To not respond in ki nd would be foolish, since the “fan gs of the beast”

would only continue to devour the helpless. Capitalism had reduced workers to

mere “slaves,” but they could improve their lot if they remained united. Spies con-

cluded his editorial by appealing to the emotions of his readers. He pointed out

Haymarket Riot (1886) 577

that poor women and children had re cently wept for their fallen fathers, and that

the police had even gone as far as to use their clubs on defenseless young girls.

Appealing to the workers’ sense of manhood, Spies charged that if they were

indeed men, then they must show it.

Not surprisingly, many Chicago newspapers and newspapers around the country

countered Spies’s arguments and labeled him an instigator of past and future vio-

lence, but the mass of disgruntled workers in Chicago fed on Spies’s anger and

advice. The unions reacted by calling demonstration meetings against police bru-

tality for that evening. Many meetings were held, and Spies was scheduled to

speak at the largest one at Haymarket Square. Consequently, the stage was set

for another major confrontation between the strikers and the police.

The meeting at Haymarket Square began at about 8:30 p.m. and Spies spoke for

about 20 minutes. To the surprise of many in the crowd of about 1,400 people, Spi-

es’s anger had waned, and he spoke against violence once again. He defended him-

self against newspaper editorials that had accused him of being the cause of

violence, and he argued that, if anyone was to blame for the violence, it was the

police and the e mployers. At a bout 9:00 p.m., Albert Parsons, a Social ist editor

of The Alarm, spoke for about an hour in much mo re radical terms. Parsons said

that the capitalist system was to blame for the workers’ ills, and that socialism

was the solution. Samuel J. Fielden, the t hird man to speak, began his speech in

the most radical tone of the night. Fielden said that, since the laws did not protect

the workers, the workers had to protect themselves. He had been spea king for

about 20 minutes when it began to rain and many peop le went home. Approxi-

mately 800 diehards stayed to hear the rest of Fielden’s speech.

At about 10:30 p.m., about 180 policemen under the command of Captain John

Bonﬁeld and Captain William Ward stormed into the square and ordered the crowd

to disperse and go home peacefully. Fieldman immediately climbed down off the

wagon platform. Suddenly, a dynamite bomb went off in front of the advancing

policemen. Ofﬁcer Mathias J. Degan, who became the ﬁrst casualty of the night,

was tossed through the air by the force of the explosion, while several of his fellow

ofﬁcers fell to the ground immediately. The bomb inﬂicted multiple wounds on the

policemen. For example, John E. Doyle suffered wounds in the leg, knee , and

back; John H. King w as wounded in the neck, feet, and arms; L. J. Murphy sus-

tained a foot wound; Arthur Conley was wounded on the right leg; and C. Whitney

received a chest wound.

A str ange silence fell over t he square for a few seconds, and then the silence

was broken by random police gunﬁre into the crowd. Many people ﬂed the square

as best they could. In the chaos, some of the people were trampled as the crowd

scrambled for their lives, while others were shot as they ran. Many of the strikers

drew their handguns and shot back at the police, wounding many of them. Just to

578 Haymarket Riot (1886)

name a few: Lieutenant James Stanton and Jacob Hansen were both shot in both

legs. Thomas Shannon was shot in a foo t, a leg, and an arm. John K. McMahon

received bullet wounds in a thigh and on the calf of his right leg. Timothy Flavin

was shot i n one leg, while James Plunkett and T. Butterly were both shot in the

hand. Edward Barrett was shot in the knee and ankle. J. Simons and A. C. Keller

were both shot on the side of their chests, and H. T. Smith was shot in the right

ankle. Besides both suffering bomb wounds, L. J. M urphy was also shot in the

neck and hand, and Arthur Conley was wounded in the leg and right shoulder.

The exchange of bullets lasted about tw o minutes and was followed by police

swinging clubs in an attempt to disperse the remaining crowd quickly. One worker

was found dead at the scene, and another was later conﬁrmed dead from his

injuries. It was calculated at the time that at least 12 workers were seriously

injured during the mayhem, but although the number of civilians killed

and wounded was most likely higher than the police casualties, the exact ﬁgure

remained unknown, since workers carried away wounded friends. Also, witnesses

reported seeing many battle-scarred m en limping and crawling into drugstores,

saloons, and stores to get away from the bullets.

Some people suffered collateral damages in spite of the fact that they were not

even present at the rally. These innocent bystanders were simply caught at the

wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them were just g etting out of a show

and were on their way home when the bullets began to ﬂy. Just to name a few of

these victims, Robert Shults and John Sachaman were both shot in the leg. Charles

Shoemaker, Josep h Kucher, and Peter Ley were all shot in the back. B. Le Plant

was shot in a leg and a shoulder. John Edlund was shot in the head, and Frank

Wrovsch received mortal wounds on his shoulder and both sides of his chest.

When the dust settled at the square, the ground was covered with injured bodies

in uniform. More than 70 policemen were wounded. Some of the wounds were so

serious that seven policeman died shortly after from their injuries. A nearby police

station was quickly converted into a hospital, and emergency aid was rendered to

the injured policemen. There, a New York Times reporter witnessed blood ﬂowing

liberally from so many wounds that t he ﬂoor was soon covered in red pools of

blood that were trampled by those present, which soon made the entire ﬂoor red

and slippery. Priests were called in and began administering to the suffering and

dying men. Surgeons went to work on the men with knives, saws, needles,

and thread. Shouts of agony pervaded the room. Family members were not

allowed to e nter the station. But upon hearing the cries from within the station,

they too cried in agony for their loved ones.

The reporter had a burning question to ask the policemen. Who had thrown the

bomb, which started the carnage? Lieutenant Bowler said that, in spite of the poor

visibility under darkness and rainfall, he was certain that the bomb had been

Haymarket Riot (1886) 579

thrown from the speaker’s wagon. When the reporter pressed Bowler if he was

sure, Bowler assured him that he had seen it thrown from the wagon with his

own eyes. Seemingly to strengthen Bowler’s testimony, Ofﬁcer Marx indepen-

dently gave the same response to the reporter’s question. However, a third police-

man swore that he had seen the bomb tossed out of a window from a neighboring

building, and yet another afﬁrmed that he had seen it hurled from a sidewalk.

Meanwhile the aftershocks of the riot were still being felt in the city. Many

angry strikers were still causing h avoc in the streets, and authorities feared that

the mob would grow larger. For example, about 200 Bohemian sausage makers

took to the streets waving red ﬂags, beating drums, a nd shouting anti-police

slogans. By this time, however, police reinforcements had arrived from other sta-

tions, and they began dealing with the crowds by ﬁring blank rounds at them. By

11:45 p.m., the crowds had dis persed, and the police moved on to the next order

of business. They i ssued arrest war rants for the Haymarket Square participants.

But this was by no means the aftermath. The effects of the riot w ould gain much

greater force during the trial that was to follow and would be felt for years to come.

About 200 people were rounded up on sus picion of murder. After questioning,

31 were indicted, and the rest were set free. By the time of the trial, however, the

list had been shortened to eight men: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Samuel Fiel-

den, Michael Schwab, Adolph Fisher, George Engel, Louis Lingg , and Oscar

Neebe. In spite of the fact that the state had been unable to locate Rudolph Schnau-

belt, it charged him with being the one who threw the bomb. Later, the sole witness

to the charge was found to be unreliable. The defense showed that the witness had

told an entirely different story to the newspapers and that he had told several dif-

ferent versions of the story since then. Ultimately, Schnaubelt was never located,

and the identity of the bomb thrower remained a mystery.

As the trial got under way, Chicago mayor Carter H. Harrison gave orders to the

police to break up any gatherings or demonstrations. Fear gripped Chicago. Many

believed that the city was on the brink of a bloody revolution. However, anger and

a cry for revenge soon replaced fear. The press and the public wanted the guilty

parties to pay for what they had done. Also, for the ﬁrst time in the city’s history,

people became aware of socialist , communist, and anarchist ideologies, and they

lashed out at foreigners more than ever before. Even the labor unions tried to dis-

tance themselves from the Haymarket Affair for fear of bei ng a ssociated with

violence.

The state sought to make an example of these men. The basic arguments that the

state made were that the riot had been a product of a planned conspiracy meeting

to exact the revenge that Spies had called for in his editorial. The evidence against

all eight men was ﬂimsy. For example, the evidence against Spies was his editorial

and his reputation as a radical. Also, the same unreliable witness that had claimed

580 Haymarket Riot (1886)

to have seen Schnaubelt hurl the bomb also testiﬁed that Spies had supplied the

match used to light the fuse before the bomb was tossed. Parsons was well known

for his socialist ideas, but he had not attended the so-called “conspiracy” meeting,

and he had left the square long before the violence began.

Several policemen swore under oath that they saw Fielden ﬁre a gun at them.

However, Fielden swore that he had never owned a gun or ever carried one.

Schwab had an alibi that proved that he had left the square long before the bomb

went off, but a witness placed him at the square at the time of the incident. Most

damming of all was the fact that Schwab, like Spies, was on the staff of the

Arbeiter-Zeitung. Fischer also worked at the same newspaper, was accused of

attending the conspiracy meeting, and was carrying a gun at the time of his arrest.

However, Fisch er claimed that he had left the square before the bomb exploded .

Engel was also accused of attending the conspiracy meeti ng, but, like Fischer, he

claimed he had left the square before the bomb went off. Neebe was a member

of a labor union and owned stock in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and an illegal police

search of his home had yielded a gun, a sword, and a red ﬂag. Lingg was neither

at the conspiracy meeti ng nor at the Haymarket event, but a witness said that he

had a habit of making bombs.

Clearly, all of the evidence was purely circumstantial at best, but Judge Joseph

C. Gary instructed the jurors that a person could be charged with murder even if he

was not present during a murder. Gary based his instructions on an Illinois law,

which made a person guilty of a crime, which he either helped commit or encour-

aged others to commit. The jury selection left muc h to be desired, because it did

not fairly represent the accused as peers. While six of the eight defendants were

foreign born, only one juror was a foreigner. While the accused worked in indus-

try, none of the jurors did. Half of the jurors were young men in their 20s who

lacked the life experiences that most of the men on trial had. Even more astonish-

ing, the judge admitted four jurors that the defense attorney William Perkins Black

had been unable to block, who admitted to be prejudiced against radicals in gen-

eral. Worst of all for the defendants, all of the jurors had admitted to have already

formed an opinion before the trial began.

Not surprisingly, the “great anarchist” trial yielded a verdict of guilty. The judge

granted the men an opportunity to spea k before the sentence wa s read. They al l

maintained that they were not being convicted of murder, but rather they were

being punished for their radical views. Spies, Parsons, F ielden, Schwab, Fischer,

Engel, and Lingg were sentenced to death. Neebe was sentenced t o 15 years of

hard prison labor. Black appealed to the judge for a new trial because, in his opin-

ion, the trial that had been conducted had been a travesty of justice. Gary deni ed

the appeal. In an effort to have the verdict overturned, Black appealed to the Illi-

nois State Supreme Court, but this appeal was also denied. As a last resort, Black

Haymarket Riot (1886) 581

appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court , but the Court claimed that the case

did not raise any federal issues. Therefore, it was not its place to overrule a lower

court decision that had direct jurisdiction over the case.

The entire country read the unfoldi ng events every step of the way and waited

for the outcome with anticipation. When the Supreme Court struck down what

seemed to be the last hope of a reversal of the verdict, most newspapers applauded

and cheered with delight, because the doom of the eight men had been sealed, and

the closing of that chapter in American history symbolized an end to the dangers

of radical ideas in the country. But it was not the case. The saga was still not over.

Once the means of the judicial branch had been exhausted, the Progressive Labor

party and other la bor unions appealed to the head of the st ate’s executive branch

for help.

Before long, Illinois governor Oglesby was over run with petitions asking for

his inte rvention. Oglesby began to feel the gr owing press ure. Some letters came

as far away as Europe. While Chicago and the world waited for the governor’s

decision, on November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide in his cell. The ofﬁcial

report stated that he had placed a piece of dynamite in his mouth, which had blown

off half of his face. Suspiciously, however, the report failed to explain how Lingg

had gained access to dynamite in his cell. The news of Lingg’s death may have

convinced the governor of just how urgent it was for him to intervene, because

he overturned the death penalty for Fielden and Schwab and replaced it with life

in prison. The governor explained that, in his opinion, these two men were not re-

ally anarchists like the other men in the case. The next day, Spies, Parsons,

Fischer, and Engle were executed by hanging.

Immediately, radicals around the cou ntry adopted the ﬁve men as symbols of

their cause. They posted pictures of their fallen comrades at their meetings and

honored them as martyrs. In 1892, Illinois elected a new governor. John Peter Alt-

geld, like the governor before him, was besieged with petitions for pardons for the

three men still in prison. On June 26, 1893, Altgeld granted a pardon to Fielden,

Schawb, and Neebe. After having served six years in prison, the men were set free.

The governor was sure that he had righted a wrong, but it cost him dearly. The par-

don destroyed the governor’s political career. Altgeld was viliﬁed in the press. His

competency was questioned. And, even though he had lived in the United States

for all but three years of his childhood, he was accused of being a foreigner and

a Socialist agi tator bent on stirring up social class hatred. Altgeld lost his bid for

reelection in 1896 and abandoned politics forever.

Employers capitalized on the Haymarket Riot and the controversy of the trial to

continue to discriminate against union members and reduce union power. For

example, the push for an eight-hour workday, begun on May 1, 1886, was stalled.

Perhaps t he greatest lasting effect of the riot was that it created a widespread

582 Haymarket Riot (1886)

revulsion against unions, which caused membership to decline and reduce union

inﬂuence, because unions became linked to radical ideas and violence in the popu-

lar mind.

—Rolando Avila

See also all entries under Molly Maguires (1870s); Great Railroad Strikes (1877); Home-

stead Strike (1892–1893); Pullman Strike (1894); Lattimer Massacre (1897);

Black Patch War; Ludlow Massa cre ( 1914); B oston Police Strike (1919); Battle o f Blair

Mountain (1921); Bonus Army (1932); Toledo Auto-Lite Strike (1934); World Trade

Organization Protests (1999).