Frank Steunenberg was elected Governor of Idaho in 1896 and 1898 with heavy labor support, but he was instrumental in crushing the Coeur d’Alene strike in 1899, and crippling the Western Federation of Miners. When the Governor was killed by a bomb explosion six years later (December 30, 1905) many accused the W.F.M. of settling an old grudge. This they denied, but the Idaho police caught the assassin, Albert E. Horsley, alias Harry Orchard, who proved to be a miner and a member of the W.F.M. Orchard at first denied everything, but the state sent James McParland, the Pinkerton detective who had infiltrated, exposed, and destroyed the Molly McGuires, to visit Orchard in his cell. McParland hinted to Orchard that he could save his neck if he implicated the leaders of the union in the assassination. Orchard did so, charging that Charles H. Moyer, President, William D. Haywood, Secretary-Treasurer, and George Pettibone, adviser to the Western Federation of Miners were instigators of the crime. In addition, he confessed to murdering twenty-six other men on union orders. The three men named by Orchard were in Colorado, but they were arrested and brought to Idaho without legal extradition to stand trial. Orchard’s charges and the kidnapping by the Idaho officials touched off an uproar in the labor and radical press. Eugene Debs threatened that “If they do attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood, and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns.” Marches were held in Boston, New York, and San Francisco to protest the first trial in which Haywood was the defendant—which began on May 7, 1907, in Boise. Clarence Darrow was the attorney for the defense, and Senator William E. Borah for the prosecution. Borah produced much oratory but little evidence aside from Orchard’s testimony against the union leader. The jury found Haywood not guilty. Another jury acquitted Pettibone in 1908, and Moyer was never tried. Orchard was sentenced to hang, but his penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. He died in jail in 1954 at the age of eighty-eight.
The following account of the assassination is taken from the Confessions and Autobiography of Harry Orchard (1907), 216–18, See David H. Grover: Debaters and Dynamiters: A Story of the Haywood Trial (1964); Philip S. Foner: History of the Labor Movement in the United States, IV, 40–60; and Abe C. Ravitz and James N. Primm, eds.: The Haywood Case (1960).
I did not see Mr. Steunenberg again until the next Thursday. I did not know where he went when he was away, and I saw his son on the street one day, and I spoke to him and asked him if they had any sheep to sell. I thought I would find out this way where his father went. He told me that he knew nothing about it, as his father attended to that, but he said I could find out by telephoning to his father at the company ranch at Bliss. But he said he would be home the next day, and I could see him if I was there. I told him I just wanted to find out where some sheep could be bought, as a friend of mine wanted them to feed.
The next day, Friday, I went to Nampa and thought I might get a chance to put the bomb under Governor Steunenberg’s seat, if I found him on the train, as the train usually stops fifteen to twenty minutes at Nampa. I had taken the powder out of the wooden box, and packed it in a little, light, sheet-iron box with a lock on, and I had a hole cut in the top of this and a little clock on one side. Both this and the bottle of acid were set in plaster [of] Paris on the other side of the hole from the clock, with a wire from the key which winds the alarm to the cork in the bottle. The giant-caps were put in the powder underneath this hole, and all I had to do was to wind up the alarm and set it and, when it went off, it would wind up the fine wire on the key, and pull out the cork, and spill the acid on the caps. I had this fitted in a little grip and was going to set it, grip and all, under his seat in the coach, if I got a chance. I went through the train when it arrived at Nampa, but did not see Mr. Steunenberg, and the train was crowded, so I would not have had any chance, anyway. I saw Mr. Steunenberg get off the train at Caldwell, but missed him on the train.
I saw him again around Caldwell Saturday afternoon. I was playing cards in the saloon at the Saratoga, and came out in the hotel lobby at just dusk, and Mr. Steunenberg was sitting there talking. I went over to the post-office and came right back, and he was still there. I went up to my room and took this bomb out of my grip and wrapped it up in a newspaper and put it under my arm and went downstairs, and Mr. Steunenberg was still there. I hurried as fast as I could up to his residence, and laid this bomb close to the gate-post, and tied a cord into a screw-eye in the cork and around a picket of the gate, so when the gate was opened, it would jerk the cork out of the bottle and let the acid run out and set off the bomb. This was set in such a way, that if he did not open the gate wide enough to pull it out, he would strike the cord with his feet, as he went to pass in. I pulled some snow over the bomb after laying the paper over it, and hurried back as fast as I could.
I met Mr. Steunenberg about two and a half blocks from his residence. I then ran as fast as I could, to get back to the hotel if possible before he got to the gate. I was about a block and a half from the hotel on the footbridge when the explosion of the bomb occurred, and I hurried to the hotel as fast as I could. I went into the bar-room, and the bartender was alone, and asked me to help him tie up a little package, and I did, and then went up to my room, intending to come right down to dinner, as nearly everyone was in at dinner.