“It’s strange,” he said. “When you begin to think, then all the
memories come back, just as clearly as if it all happened yesterday.
I knew Vanzetti best. He was one of my closest friends. As soon as he
was arrested he got word to me and I got the others together. We went
to see them at the Brockton police station. We raised money—two or
three dollars here, another dollar there. It’s all down in writing,
every penny. Then, at the first trial for the Bridgewater holdup,
Thayer gave Vanzetti twelve to fourteen years. When Tresca heard
that he came on from New York. ‘What is going on here?’ he asked us.
‘Fourteen years? Is that what you do?’ So then he got Moore, the
lawyer from the Lawrence strike, to come in and take charge of the
case.”
“I know this may be painful to you,” I told him, “but I have
a letter from Upton Sinclair, who talked with Moore after the
executions. Moore told him then—his exact words were: ‘Sacco was
probably, Vanzetti possibly guilty’.”
Felicani’s sport shirt rippled as he shrugged his vast shoulders.
“I’ve heard things of that kind, so many rumors. You know, Sinclair
wrote most of _Boston_ right here in this office. I don’t see why he
didn’t mention it to me. Moore was angry after he left the case. His
anger just got too big.”
I knew that Sacco had come to distrust Moore, but I did not know the
details of Moore’s leaving. Felicani was roundabout in answering me.
“I never say Moore kept money for himself. He was an honest man. But
for all the money you gave him, he wanted more always—for witnesses,
for travels, for new investigations. He had no idea of money. If you
gave him a thousand dollars every other day Moore was all right, but
we didn’t have that much, the committee. Finally I tightened the
purse strings. Then Moore started his own committee to raise money.
That was why he got into a fight with Sacco, how the bitterness
started. That was why we let Moore go and got Thompson.”
His voice was heavy with regret. “Ah, if we had had Thompson from
the beginning, then we would have got them off. When we first went
to him he was cold. He listened to us and he said he’d take the case
for twenty-five thousand dollars. When he started he didn’t know the
difference between an anarchist and a Communist. You could tell that
by an appeal he drew up that Vanzetti corrected. After he talked for
some time with Vanzetti, he understood. It made all the difference.
He took part then as if we were friends. A wonderful man, Thompson.
An aristocrat, the way the word should mean. He would have made
mincemeat of a man like Katzmann, if only we’d had him instead of
Moore.”
One thing I had been wanting to ask was about the various bombings
connected with the case. Would he agree that anarchists had been
responsible for them? Sacco and Vanzetti themselves were said to have
been philosophical anarchists, as opposed to violence as Tolstoy was.
But where did the dividing line come?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account