Public opinion in Massachusetts was against Sacco and Vanzetti. To the community they were two murderers who had been given a fair trial and every opportunity for appeal afterward. The whole thing had gone on for much too long. Radicals and anarchists and Communists were trying to use the case as a lever to pry apart the foundations of law and order. But Massachusetts was not going to be dictated to by such people. There might be demonstrations in front of American embassies throughout the world, there might be more bombs planted in the houses of those concerned—as had already happened to a witness and one of the jurors. Nothing like that was going to change the course of justice! Conservative opinion more and more adopted the point of view that Sacco and Vanzetti had become a challenge to society that could be answered only by their deaths. Literary talent was the forte of the other side. That side consisted of the literary left, radicals, liberals, Communists, woolly well-meaning progressives like my Aunt Amy, plus a large scattering of people who could not be labeled politically but whose sense of justice had been outraged. Some of these latter were starched conservatives. The crystallized view of the opposition was that Sacco and Vanzetti were the victims of a malignant conspiracy. Neither judge nor district attorney had really believed them guilty of murder. The trial was a put-up job to get rid of two troublesome agitators. For the Communists—to whom this case in its later stages gave their first opportunity for an international mass appeal—Sacco and Vanzetti were martyrs of the proletariat, murdered by reactionaries trying to preserve an unjust social order. Seen from this point of view, two alien Reds could expect no justice from a Massachusetts court or a Dedham jury. During my month in Dedham I used to wonder about that earlier jury. Drawn in much the same way that we were, the jurors could not have been so very different from ourselves. And what were we? Some middle class, some working class, a few of us stupid, a few opinionated, but most of us reasonable enough to weigh an issue. At least we tried to overcome our prejudices. The jury I sat on would have been prejudiced against Reds, but it would not have convicted a Communist on a capital charge because of his political beliefs. It did not seem to me the Sacco-Vanzetti jury could have been otherwise. Granted even that the foreman was prejudiced, some of the others would have stood out against injustice. I felt sure that when the jurors decided that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty, it was because they were convinced that they were guilty of murder.