The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in ChicagoMcLean, George N.
History
The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in Chicago
McLean, George N.
Anarchists -- United States; Haymarket Square Riot, Chicago, Ill., 1886
I implore you not to let this difference of action have any
weight with you in determining our fate. During our trial
the desire of the prosecutor to slaughter me, and to let my
co-defendants off with milder punishment was quite apparent
and manifest. It seemed to me then, and a great many of
others, that the persecutors would be satisfied with one
life--namely, mine. Grinnell, in his argument, intimated this
very plainly. I care not to protest my innocence of any crime,
and of the one I am accused of in particular. I have done that
and leave the rest to the judgment of history. But to you I
wish to address myself now as the alleged arch-conspirator
(leaving the fact that I never have belonged to any kind of
a conspiracy out of the question altogether). If a sacrifice
of life there must be, will not my life suffice? The State's
attorney of Cook county asked for no more. Take this, then!
Take my life! I offer it to you so that you may satisfy the
fury of a semi-barbaric mob, and save that of my comrades. I
know that every one of my comrades is as willing to die, and
perhaps more so than I am. It is not for their sake that I
make this offer, but in the name of humanity and progress,
in the interest of a peaceable--if possible--development of
the social forces that are destined to lift our race upon a
higher and better plane of civilization. In the name of the
traditions of our country I beg you to prevent a seven-fold
murder upon men whose only crime is that they are idealists,
that they long for a better future for all. If legal murder
there must be, let one, let mine, suffice.
"A. SPIES."
CHAPTER XIII.
LINGG SUICIDES. DR. BOLTON WITH THE PRISONERS. THEY DECLINE
SPIRITUAL COMFORT. THE LAST NIGHT OF THE DOOMED MEN. PARSONS
SINGS IN HIS CELL. TELEGRAMS FOR PARSONS. HIS LAST LETTER.
LINGG COMMITS SUICIDE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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