Haymarket (47 page)

At 8:55 on the morning of November 10, the sound of an explosion resounded through the corridor of the jail. A guard standing in front of Lingg’s cell saw a puff of blue smoke roll out from it and immediately yelled, “It’s Lingg!” The other guards raced toward the area. They found Lingg lying on his bed, with his head over the edge of it, and everything in the cell—bed, pillow, walls and floor—splattered with blood, flesh, teeth, and bits of bone. Turning his body over, the guards discovered that Lingg was still breathing: a sound like a clogged gurgle was coming from his mouth. How he could still be breathing astonished them. The entire lower part of his face, including the larger part of his lips and most of his tongue, had been torn away, leaving a hideous, gaping wound that extended nearly to the angles of the jaw. His nose had collapsed into itself, a mass of sunken, flabby flesh. A bit of chin remained and the trace of an upper lip. His eyes were closed.

Yet he was fully conscious. The jailers carried him from his cell to an office across the way and medical help was immediately summoned. The doctors decided to attempt surgery, without anesthesia, to save him, perhaps because someone with a taste for grim humor had asked how healthy a man had to be before he could be hanged, perhaps out of determination to thwart Lingg’s last wish—to die by his own hand.

Three doctors took turns working on him, inserting their probes, twisting their blunt instruments into his bleeding flesh in a tableau of excruciating Inquisitorial horror. Throughout the ordeal Lingg never once groaned, though his body now and then involuntarily twitched with agony. He desperately wanted to escape his tormentors and die, but for six hours his powerful body refused to cooperate. Then suddenly, around 3:00
P.M
., he lapsed into a coma and expired. The guards threw the corpse into a bathtub, to await its expected companions.

Nina Van Zandt was convinced that the police had murdered Lingg, but few others who knew him accepted that theory. As Engel said, “Why kill a man the day before he’s due to be hanged?” No, it was generally accepted that Lingg, who had personified defiance throughout his trial and imprisonment, was determined to rob the State of jurisdiction over his mind or his body.

The only real puzzle was how he’d managed to get the explosives to kill himself. Many assumed that his girlfriend, Ida, had somehow smuggled in the dynamite cartridge. But it turned out to have been Dyer Lum, the new proprietor of the
Alarm
and a far more militant revolutionary than anyone had suspected. It was he who had passed Lingg the cartridge, concealed within a cigar casing. Since the prisoners were allowed to smoke, the cigar had gone unexamined when the police had searched Lingg’s cell three days earlier. When he was ready, Lingg had calmly placed the cigar in his mouth and lit it.

In its front-page article on Lingg’s suicide, the
Chicago Tribune
devoted the last paragraph to triumphantly reminding its readers that at least his death “closes the mouths of those anarchistic sympathizers” who had been claiming that the police planted the bombs found in Lingg’s cell on November 6th in order to discredit the movement for clemency.

When William Dean Howells heard the news of Lingg’s death, he told the press, “All over the world people must be asking themselves, ‘What cause is this really, for which men die so gladly, so inexorably?’ ”

The news that Lingg had killed himself was immediately telegraphed to the State Capitol at Springfield. An hour and a half later, at four-thirty, reporters crowding the rotunda were told that Governor Oglesby would shortly issue his decision on the clemency appeal.

He appeared in person soon after, looking somber and uncomfortable. Reading directly from a prepared text, he began ominously: “My careful consideration of the evidence has failed to produce upon my mind any impression tending to impeach the verdict of the jury or the judgment of the trial court or of the Supreme Court affirming the guilt of all these parties.”

Michael Schwab’s wife, Maria, standing in the rotunda, turned pale and looked as if she might faint; just the day before, the governor had revealed that State’s Attorney Grinnell had joined with Judge Gary in recommending commutation for Schwab and Fielden, because of their
“respectful and decorous” conduct throughout the trial and their appropriately remorseful petition. Everyone had been confident that their joint recommendation would be followed, which the governor’s gloomy introduction now seemed to contradict.

But in truth, Oglesby had simply decided, in keeping with his self-protective nature, on a cautious, long-winded prelude. His primary concern was setting himself to rights with the business community; it had been deluging him with petitions demanding that he stand firm. To secure his standing with the propertied classes, Oglesby declared at the top of his statement that he entirely agreed with the court’s conclusion that all seven men were indeed, through their “violent” speech, guilty of being accessories to murder. The governor then went on to announce that Parsons, Fischer, Engel, and Lingg, later implicitly joined by Spies, had, by demanding “unconditional release,” precluded him from even considering the question of clemency in their cases; they had doomed themselves.

All prudential bases covered, Oglesby finally felt able to declare that in the cases of Schwab and Fielden he was—“in the interest of humanity, and without doing violence to public justice”—commuting their sentences to life imprisonment.

When word of Oglesby’s decision reached Lucy that evening, she rushed to the Cook County jail, accompanied by Lizzie and William. They found the entrance to the prison blocked by a solid phalanx of police. Lucy tried to push her way through, but was brusquely thrown back. Stunned, she looked as if she might pass out. An anxious Lizzie hurried to her side, and the touch of her hand seemed to bring Lucy back.

Within a few seconds, she was again pressing toward the line of guards, her eyes now clouded with anger. She yelled up into the face of the nearest officer, “What time are you going to murder my husband?!” The guards stood like statues, eyes averted, silent. Spotting the sergeant in charge, Lucy went straight over to him.

“I know for a fact,” she shouted, “that some of the other wives and family have been allowed inside the jail earlier this evening to say a final good-bye. Why am I being denied the same privilege?”

“I have no idea, madam,” he said gently, “but I feel sure that if you return in the morning, entrance can be gained.”

Believing him, and in any case having no other option, the three left.

When the prisoners were told of Oglesby’s decision, they expressed no surprise and limited distress. Spies chatted amiably with the guards, then sat down and wrote Nina to “be strong; show no weakness.” When a prison chaplain dropped by Engel’s cell to offer consolation, Engel told him that he needed none. “I feel content,” he told the chaplain, “that I’ve been true to the only religion I recognize—‘to wrong no man and to do good to everybody.’ ” Fischer asked for a bottle of champagne and wrote his typographical union requesting that he be buried with “our beloved red emblem,” and without “religious humbug” or “sentimental songs.”

As for Parsons, he kept up a steady stream of cheerful conversation with the deputy sheriff assigned to him, turning melancholy only when expressing concern for Lucy and his children. At one point late in the evening, a telegram arrived from his brother, William, and Parsons read its last line to the deputy.

“Listen to this, will you?” he said, his voice full of affectionate mirth. “These are my beloved brother’s final words to me: ‘I am proud of your sublimity, fortitude, and hereditary heroism.’ Can you believe it? Here I am about to march to the scaffold for my principles and William wants to give credit not to me, but to the family blood!” The deputy tried his best to chortle, but felt at a loss for words; it wasn’t William’s sentiments, but Albert’s smile, that unsettled him.

It was only when the lights were turned off in the cellblock shortly after the death watch changed at 1:30
A.M
., and each man sat alone in his cage, that the silence grew heavy and the mood darkened. Before long, loud noises ascended from the courtyard below, the cacophonous sound of dozens of saws and hammers working feverishly away. The scaffold was being erected.

Since no one could sleep, Albert decided he’d try and distract his friends from the noise with an impromptu recitation of poetry and song. He recited stanza after stanza of John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Reformer”:

oblivious to the irony that just weeks before, Whittier had refused to sign William Dean Howells’s petition for mercy.

Albert then sang his favorite of all the songs that he’d performed over the years at parades and rallies—his beloved “Annie Laurie.” His sweet lyrical tenor soared at the refrain:

It carried hauntingly along the row of cells, reverberating over the stone walls.

At that very moment, Captain Black was sitting on a train headed back to Springfield. He’d no sooner returned to Chicago that morning than a telegram had arrived from New York City, which had kindled a spark of hope. The telegram read:

Captain Black quickly established that Wagener was a real person, and a reputable one, and chose to interpret the telegram as meaning that the actual bomb-thrower had made himself available to testify.

Black arrived at Springfield at 8:30
A.M
.—three hours before the scheduled executions—and was immediately ushered into the library of Oglesby’s private residence. The governor had also received the telegram from New York and, discarding all preliminaries, asked Captain Black what meaning he assigned to it.

“From all I can discover,” Black said, “the contents and the signer are authentic.”

“If so,” the somber-faced governor asked, “what are you proposing?”

“A sixty- to ninety-day reprieve, Your Honor, to allow time to return
the bomb-thrower to Illinois and to take his testimony, which will surely throw critical light on the events at Haymarket and the responsibility for what took place there. Having admired the fair-minded way you’ve conducted this inquiry, I feel sure you’ll want to give the condemned men every legitimate chance to save their lives.”

Saying he needed to be alone to consider the matter, the governor retired to an inner room. Twenty minutes later, he reappeared and rejected the request for postponement. Months later, when Lucy tried to locate Wagener and get to the bottom of his story, he was no longer to be found at his given address and had left no forwarding one.