The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America: From its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in ChicagoMcLean, George N.
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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
"In addressing this Court I speak as the representative of one
class to the representative of another. I will begin with the
words uttered five hundred years ago on a similar occasion by
the Venetian Doge Faliero, who, addressing the court, said:
'My defense is your accusation; the causes of my alleged
crime, your history.' I have been indicted under the charge
of murder as an accomplice or accessory. Upon this indictment
I have been convicted. There was no evidence produced by the
State to show or even indicate that I had any knowledge of the
man who threw the bomb, or that I myself had anything to do
with the throwing of the missile unless, of course, you weigh
the testimony of the accomplices of the State's Attorney and
Bonfield, the testimony of Thompson and Gilmer, by the price
they were paid for it. If there was no evidence to show that I
was legally responsible for the deed, then my conviction and
the execution of the sentence are nothing less than a willful,
malicious and deliberate murder--as foul a murder as may be
found in the annals of religious, political, or any other
sort of persecution. Judicial murders have in many cases been
committed where the representatives of the state were acting
in good faith, believing their victims to be guilty of the
charge or accusation. In this case the representatives of the
state cannot justify themselves by a similar excuse, for
they themselves have fabricated most of the testimony which
was used as a pretense to convict us--convict us by a jury
picked to convict before this Court and before the public,
which is supposed to be the State. I charge the State's
Attorney and Bonfield with a heinous conspiracy to commit
murder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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