Haymarket Affair
The Haymarket affair began when a bomb exploded among a squad of policemen at a workers' rally in Haymarket Square, Chicago, on May 4, 1886. Since May 1, a loosely organized national strike for the eight-hour day had been gaining momentum in Chicago. On May 3 strikers had come to the support of an already-existing strike at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company; police had fired on the crowd and four people had been killed. The Haymarket rally, organized by a small anarchist group, was one of many called to protest the killings. Only thirteen hundred people attended, and most left when it began to rain. About three hundred remained when 180 police arrived and demanded that they disperse. Suddenly a bomb exploded among the policemen, killing one and wounding many more, including seven who died later. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing seven or eight people in the crowd and injuring about a hundred, half of them fellow officers.
The Haymarket bombing triggered a national wave of fear; public officials, civic leaders, the press, and some union leaders joined in equating foreign birth with anarchism and terror. In Chicago hundreds of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals were rounded up. Eight anarchists (all but one of them German immigrants) were indicted for conspiracy, though none was charged with throwing the bomb. After a conspicuously biased trial, seven were condemned to hang; the eighth was given a long prison sentence. The convictions were upheld in September 1887, and the executions set for November 11. On November 10 one of the condemned men, Louis Lingg, hanged himself; a few hours later, Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two of the men's sentences to life imprisonment. The remaining four, Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel, were executed on schedule.
On June 26, 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three survivors, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neebe. This action, though applauded by many, was also widely criticized and probably contributed to Altgeld's defeat for reelection. The nativistic fear of immigrants and radicals aroused by Haymarket lingered for years, preparing the ground for further red scares in the future.
See also Nativism; Radicalism.
