June 24, 1893
“Come in, Ned.” Governor John Peter Altgeld rose from his desk and held out his hand. “I have reread all your reports and have found them most helpful in this work on which I am engaged.”
“Thank you, Governor,” I said respectfully. “May I present my wife, Nora Joyce Fitzpatrick.”
“I believe I have met you before, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, at some of the balls in Chicago. You are most welcome.”
His tone implied that only a blind man would forget my wife, which was certainly true.
“Nora will confirm some of the details of the story I have been led to believe you want to hear.”
“Excellent.”
Everyone expected that the long-awaited pardon of the surviving Haymarket prisoners would occur shortly after Altgeld was elected governor. The studious, somewhat frail German Lutheran, with the neatly trimmed spade beard, was a Democrat and had no use for Marshall Field and Cy McCormick, to say nothing of the unspeakable Joe Medil at the Tribune. Yet he had delayed. The whole matter, he had told his allies, had to be explored carefully.
The World’s Fair has started. The White Stockings are still the world’s champions in baseball, the L tracks are going up around the area the papers are calling the Loop.
“He should examine it carefully,” the General had said. “He will be speaking to the ages.”
“I quite agree,” I said.
“That’s why he wants to see you.”
“Why me? Everything I think about the case is already in print.”
“Not quite everything.”
“The Galway file?”
“It is time for it, Ned. I told John that you had information about the one subject about which he remains in doubt.”
“Who threw the bomb?”
“He is inclined to think that it was an individual seeking revenge against the police.”
“He’s right, though in a way he cannot imagine.”
“He seeks a little more certainty. I told him you could provide it.”
“If he is willing to believe the fantastical.”
“He is, Ned. Believe me, he is… Will you take the train down to Springfield and show him the Galway file?”
“Certainly.”
His circuitous approach to the request was unnecessary. However, it was very Irish.
“Good!”
“Nora will come with me.”
The General digested that for a moment.
“Capital idea!”
“I have written a draft for my pardon,” the Governor said as we sat at his desk. “It examines in detail five issues.” He picked up the first page of a document and began to read.
FIRST—That the jury which tried the case was a packed jury selected to convict.
SECOND—That according to the law as laid down by the Supreme Court, both prior to and again since the trial of this case, the jurors, according to their own answers, were not competent jurors and the trial was therefore not a legal trial.
THIRD—That the defendants were not proven to be guilty of the crime charged in the indictment.
FOURTH—That as to the defendant Nebbe, the state’s attorney had declared at the close of the evidence that there was no case against him, and yet he has been kept in prison all these years.
FIFTH—That the trial judge was either so prejudiced against the defendants, or else so determined to win the applause of a certain class in the community that he could not and did not grant a fair trial.
“I ASSUME, NED, FROM YOUR writings that you agree with all these arguments.”
“I do indeed, sir.”
“My only problem is why the bomb was thrown. The prosecution, as I note later in my proclamation, never discovered who threw the bomb at the policeman. I myself believe that it was the revenge of someone who had been abused by the police…”
“You’re quite right, sir. The bomb hit Matt Degen but was aimed at Captain Ward who was near him. I remember in the police station when the priest was anointing Matt, Captain Ward muttered over and over again, that if Matt had not absorbed the explosion, it would have hit him.”
“Someone was trying to kill Captain Ward?”
“No, sir, someone was trying to kill Captain Bonfield. He assumed from the insignia of rank on Captain Ward that he was Bonfield. He was a careless killer, sir. Very careless.”
“Do you know his name, Ned?”
“Yes, sir. He was called Sean-Tom Og Joyce.”
“He was my first husband Myles’s third cousin, four times removed, your lordship,” Nora explained. “He’s dead now.”
The Governor frowned at this relationship which, not unreasonably, he could not comprehend.
“Dead?”
I intervened before Nora called him “your lordship” again.
“We call this the ‘Galway file,’ Governor. I discovered it while we were searching Captain Bonfield’s house. I saved it for a day like this.”
I gave him the file, which included the page of Mary’s letter to Josie in which she told of the death of Sean-Tom Og Joyce. He looked through it very carefully. Then we told him the story.
He returned the file to me and sat back in his chair.
“It certainly confirms my suspicions,” he said slowly.
“It’s a fantastical story, sir.”
He smiled, a warm smile that one would expect from a man whose name was “old gold.”
“Ned, madam, you two are certainly among the most intelligent and honest people in the state of Illinois. You have no reason to concoct such a story. Naturally I believe it. Thank you for making my work easier.”
“It may not be politically expedient, sir, to issue that document.”
“That’s what many of my staff say, but, damn it, Ned,” he pounded his desk, “It’s the RIGHT thing to do!”
“Ned,” my wife said solemnly as we left the executive mansion, “we have just spoken with one of the great Americans of our time.”
“As always, my dear, you are right.”
I add to this record the portion of the document about the trial which may be pertinent.
The state has never discovered who it was that threw the bomb which killed the policemen, and the evidence does not show any connection whatever between the defendants and the man who did throw it. The trial judge, in overruling the motion for a new hearing, and again, recently in a magazine article, used this language:
“The conviction has not gone on the grounds that they did have actually any personal participation in the particular act which caused the death of Degen, but the conviction proceeds upon the ground that they had generally, by speech and print, advised large classes of the people, not particular individuals, but large classes, to commit murder, and had left the commission, the time and place and when, to the individual will and whim, or caprice, or whatever it may be, of each individual man who listened to their advice, and that in consequence of that advice, in pursuance of that advice, and influenced by that advice, somebody not known did throw the bomb that caused Degen’s death. Now, if this is not a correct principle of the law, then the defendants, of course, are entitled to a new trial. This case is without precedent; there is no example in the law books of a case of this sort.”
The Judge certainly told the truth when he stated that this case was without a precedent, and that no example could be found in the law books to sustain the law as above laid down. For, in all the centuries during which government has been maintained among men, and crime has been punished, no judge in a civilized country has ever laid down such a rule before. The petitioners claim that it was laid down in this case simply because the prosecution, not having discovered the real criminal, would otherwise not have been able to convict anybody; that this course was then taken to appease the fury of the public, and that the judgment was allowed to stand for the same reason. I will not discuss this. But taking the law as above laid down, it was necessary under it to prove, and that beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person committing the violent deed had at least heard or read the advice given to masses, for until he either heard or read it he did not receive it, and if he did not receive it, he did not commit the violent act in pursuance of that advice; and it is here that the case for the State fails; with all his apparent eagerness to force conviction in court, and his efforts in defending his course since the trial, the Judge, speaking on this point in his magazine article, makes this statement: “It is probably true that Rudolph Schnaubult threw the bomb,” which statement is a mere surmise and is all that is known about it, and is certainly not sufficient to convict eight men on. In fact, until the State proves from whose hands the bomb came, it is impossible to show any connection between the man who threw it and these defendants.
It is further shown that the mass of matter contained in the record and quoted at length in the Judge’s magazine article, showing the use of seditious and incendiary language, amounts to but little when its source is considered. The two papers in which articles appeared at intervals during the years were obscure little sheets having scarcely any circulation and the articles themselves were written at times of great public excitement when an element in the community claimed to have been outraged; and the same is true of the speeches made by the defendants and others; the apparently seditious utterances were such as are always heard when men imagine that they have been wronged or are excited or partially intoxicated; and the talk of a gigantic anarchistic conspiracy is not believed by the then chief of police, as will be shown hereafter, and it is not entitled to serious notice, in view of the fact that, while Chicago had nearly a million inhabitants, the meetings held on the lakefront on Sundays during the summer by these agitators rarely had fifty people present, and most of these went from mere curiosity, while the meetings held indoors during the winter were still smaller. The meetings held from time to time by the masses of the laboring people must not be confounded with the meetings above named, although in times of excitement and trouble much violent talk was indulged in by irresponsible parties, which was forgotten when the excitement was over.
I also think it pertinent to add his opinion of Judge Joseph Gray because it confirms that what I have written in this account about the Judge is not my own prejudice.
It is further charged with much bitterness by those who speak for the prisoners that the record of the case shows that the Judge conducted the trial with malicious ferocity and forced eight men to be tried together; that in cross-examining the State’s witnesses he confined counsel for the defense to the specific points touched on by the State, while in the cross-examination of the defendants’ witnesses he permitted the State’s Attorney to go into all manner of subjects entirely foreign to the matters on which the witnesses were examined in chief; also that every ruling throughout the long trial on any contested point was in favor of the State, and further, that page after page of the record contains insinuating remarks of the Judge, made in the hearing of the jury, and with the evident intent of bringing the jury to his way of thinking; that these speeches, coming from the court, were much more damaging than any speeches from the State’s Attorney could possibly have been; that the State’s Attorney often took his cue from the Judge’s remarks; that the Judge’s magazine article recently published, although written nearly six years after the trial, is yet full of venom; that, pretending to simply review the case, he had to drag into his article a letter written by an excited woman to a newspaper after the trial was over, and which therefore had nothing whatever to do with the case and was included simply to create a prejudice against the woman, as well as against the dead and the living, and that, not content with this, he in the same article makes an insinuating attack on one of the lawyers for the defense, not for anything done at the trial, but because more than a year after the trial when some of the defendants had been hung, he ventured to express a few kind, if erroneous, sentiments over the graves of his dead clients, whom he at least believed to be innocent. It is urged that such ferocity or subserviencey is without a parallel in all history; that even Jeffries in England contented himself with hanging his victims, and did not stop to berate them after they were dead. 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.
June 26, 1893
Special to the Chicago Times
By Ned Fitzpatrick
Shortly after 4:00 this afternoon, E.S. Dreyer, who had chaired the Grand Jury which indicted the Haymarket defendants but who has championed their cause through the years, handed Governor John Peter Altgeld’s “absolute pardon” to Warden R.L. Allen of the State Penitentiary at Joliet in the presence of Samuel Fielden, Oscar Nebbe, and Michael Schwab. Nebbe, whose young wife and the mother of his two children died while he was in prison, said to Dreyer, “I have to thank you for this and I believe that this is justice, even though it comes tardily.”
Warden Allen treated the survivors to a dinner, promised them the best suit of clothes money could buy and a “sterling recommendation” for their work ethic. He also advised them to steer clear of anarchism when they returned home.
The men left for Chicago at 6:15 and arrived shortly after eight o’clock. Each returned to his home with emotions that one can barely imagine.
The story does not really have a happy ending. Five innocent men are dead. Nor is the story over, as the dedication tomorrow of the Martyrs Shrine at Waldheim Cemetery proves.
Perhaps it will never be over.
None of the pardoned men were present at the dedication of the shrine to the Haymarket Martyrs. Young Albert Parsons Jr, looking weak and confused, did the actual dedication just as Matt Degen’s son dedicated the policeman’s statute at the Haymarket. History will always see the police and the Martyrs as opponents, though in fact they shared a common enemy. Nora and I went to the ceremony. I was astonished at the deterioration of Nina Spies. The beautiful and fashionable young socialite has become a haggard, haunted woman though she has yet to reach her thirtieth year. Is she paying the price for youthful folly or will she always be a dedicated mourner? Perhaps both.
There was great rejoicing over the pardon because it in effect declares the martyrs innocent. Yet as someone said it does not bring them back to life. Nor does it bring back from the dead Oscar Nebbe’s wife, who died of worry and heartache during his imprisonment.
A few people did recognize me though I was not wearing my white suit. They thanked me for my efforts for the pardon, though I had done very little.
“It is over,” Nora said on the train ride back to the Wisconsin Central station, “not for them surely. Not ever for them, but for us.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “it is over for us.”
I have permitted personal matters to intrude into this story. I should not end without reference to them, should anyone read this document and wonder.
I continue to write for magazines and sometimes for the Chicago Times. I also appear on occasion in the General’s law offices. Josie and Timmy are happily married, the adoring parents of Nora Ann, and expecting a second child. We have another son, Edmund. It is ten years now since I brought the boy’s mother back from Ireland. I am over thirty and my wife is twentynine. She is more beautiful than ever and I am more in love with her than ever. Her intelligence, determination, and grace have made her what she was destined to be, a West of Ireland Gaelic queen.
Apparently she still loves me. She permits me to share her bed, which also astonishes me. I said this to her one night. She snuggled close to me and laughed. “Don’t be absurd, Mr. Fitzpatrick. You own the bed and everything else in this house, including me, thanks be to God.”
I do not quite understand, but it is perhaps not necessary that I do so.