Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the ConspiratorsSchaack, Michael J.
History
Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe; Communism, Socialism, and Nihilism in Doctrine and in Deed; The Chicago Haymarket Conspiracy and the Detection and Trial of the Conspirators
Having been a pupil of Reinsdorf, Lingg was an opponent of all
peaceable agitation. He believed in organizing armed forces and
conquering everything by main force. He had no love at all for those
who talked peaceable agitation; he called them fools and cranks. Of
this class were the old-time Socialists, and he looked upon them with
haughty disdain. He found better material to work on for helping him in
the revolution he proposed, and, although he molded many an Anarchist
out of the softer clay of humanity, still he was not satisfied, but
complained continually that they did not move fast enough, did not take
hold with celerity and failed to develop such heroic qualities as he
wished to see. The restless spirit within him, his implacable hatred
of society, tinged with the bitterness of his doubtful birth, and his
strong impulses manifested themselves in all his acts and utterances.
An illustration of these traits is the impatience he exhibited over the
failure of trusted men to come early to the house of Seliger to secure
bombs on the evening of May 4, and his departure with the bombs to
Neff’s Hall to have them speedily distributed. Another example is found
in the bitter reproaches he heaped on those who had failed to carry out
their part after the inauguration of the Haymarket riot. His hopes, his
ambitions, had been set on the successful consummation of that plot. It
was to have overthrown all government and all law, which he declared
were good enough for old women to prevent them from quarreling, but
needless for men of intelligence and independence.
For four weeks prior to the 4th of May he was out of work, but he
was by no means idle. He worked early and late attending meetings
and making bombs, so that, the moment the signal for the general
revolution was given, every member of the armed sections might be
supplied with the destructive agent. He wanted the whole city blown
up, every capitalist wiped off the face of the earth; and he and his
trusted comrades, Sunday after Sunday, in anticipation of the uprising,
practiced in the suburbs with rifles and 44-caliber revolvers.
Lingg became the most expert of them all and was looked upon by his
associates as a crack shot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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