daily sightseeing tours to South Braintree for newly arrived
sympathizers. Outstanding among the characters drawn to the scene
was Zara du Pont, aunt of most of the living du Pont dynasty. Her
singularly squashed hats, tweed suits that never wore out, and brass
ear trumpet identified her a hundred yards away. She had come from
Cambridge to indulge in her passion for picketing, for she made it
her habit to join any line she saw, often with no idea of what or why
she was picketing and—because of her deafness—with no way of finding
out. Less well connected if no less obvious was William Obey of New
York, who arrived at Parlor D with a certificate of release from
a mental hospital. When his individualism became too flagrant and
Tom O’Connor at last had to ask him to leave, he seated himself on
the curb at Bowdoin Street with his portable typewriter in his lap,
pecking away and telling the bystanders that the rush was so great at
headquarters that he had to do his work outside.
On that final Sunday, August 21, Police Superintendent Crowley was
taking no chances. For the first time anyone could remember, no
permits were given out and no meetings on the Common were allowed.
The Defense Committee had held its final meeting the night before at
the Scenic Auditorium. By the middle of the overcast afternoon there
were about twenty thousand people scattered over the forty-eight
acres of Boston Common. Some watched the baseball games being played
in the diamonds beyond the old Central Burying-Ground. Others
listened to Stone’s Band at the Parkman Bandstand playing excerpts
from _The Bohemian Girl_. Still others—the flotsam of the city—lay
asleep on the grass. Perhaps a third of those wandering on the
Common had come there out of a sense of curiosity, a feeling that
something exciting was going to happen. For most of the afternoon
nothing happened. Then shortly after four o’clock Paula Holladay in
her red slicker walked up from Charles Street and across the Common
toward the bandstand. On the back of the slicker was lettered: SAVE
SACCO AND VANZETTI. IS JUSTICE DEAD? As she walked along the mall
a crowd began to fall in behind her. Most of those following her
were indifferent if not hostile, but a few sympathizers produced
Sacco-Vanzetti placards from under their coats. She continued her
Pied Piper walk, gathering several thousand in her wake by the time
she reached Tremont Street. The police did not interfere until the
crowd spilled over into the roadway and blocked traffic. Then a squad
of bluecoats surrounded her and carried her off, along with William
Patterson and several other placard-wielders, to the Joy Street
Station. Here she was told she might go free if she would promise to
take off the slicker and not to return to the Common. Superintendent
Crowley came in person to the station to warn her paternally that
Boston was “full of Irish Catholic boys, young hoodlums, who will
be sure to try to do you harm if you go on the streets wearing that
slicker.”
Within the Charlestown prison the customary Sunday afternoon bustle
of visits continued, even though the whole area was cordoned off
by the police. The prison band played its limited selections in
the octagon anteroom, and prisoners sat in their usual rows at the
oak tables facing their visitors. So damp was the air that drops
of moisture kept dripping from the skylight struts. Because of the
humidity Warden Hendry allowed the door of the death house to be left
open. Luigia and Rosina came and stayed their hour. Rosina had not
brought the children; she did not want them to see their father in
his death cell. Sacco had been for some time occupied with a letter
to Dante and spent the day, except for the visiting hour, working on
it. He told Vanzetti that he did not want it made public for five
years. Although Sacco had planned to have its contents kept secret,
the Defense Committee persuaded him to allow them to release it
immediately for its propaganda effect, to sway every ounce of opinion
possible in the last hours.
Facing extinction, Sacco achieved the slow-moving dignity that came,
as a rule, more easily to Vanzetti:
_Much have we suffered during this long Calvary. We protest today as
we protested yesterday. We protest always for our freedom._
_If I stopped hunger strike the other day, it was because there was
no more sign of life in me. Because I protested with my hunger strike
yesterday as today I protest for life and not for death._
_I sacrificed because I wanted to come back to the embrace of your
dear little sister Ines and your mother and all the beloved friends
and comrades of life and not death. So Son, today life begins to
revive slow and calm, but yet without horizon and always with sadness
and visions of death...._
_But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don’t you
use all for yourself only, but down yourself just one step, at your
side and help the weak ones that cry for help, help the prosecuted
and the victim, because that are your better friends; they are the
comrades that fight and fall as your father and Bartolo fought and
fell yesterday for the conquest of the joy of freedom for all and the
poor workers. In this struggle of life you will find more love and
you will be loved...._
_Much have I thought of you when I was lying in the death house—the
singing, the kind tender voices of the children from the playground,
where there was all the life and the joy of liberty—just one step
from the wall which contains the buried agony of three buried souls.
It would remind me so often of you and your sisters Ines, and I wish
I could see you every moment. But I feel better that you did not come
to the death-house so that you could not see the horrible picture of
three lying in agony waiting to be electrocuted, because I do not
know what effect it would have on your young age._...
_Dante, I say once more to love and be nearest to your mother and the
beloved ones in these sad days, and I am sure that with your brave
heart and kind goodness they will feel less discomfort. And you will
also not forget to love me a little for I do—O, Sonny! thinking so
much and so often of you._
_Best fraternal greetings to all the beloved ones, love and kisses to
your little Ines and mother. Most hearty affectionate embrace._[35]
Vanzetti also wrote a long letter to Dante. Like Sacco’s, it was more
a testament than a farewell to a thirteen-year-old boy. Even more
explicitly than Sacco, Vanzetti reaffirmed his revolutionary faith:
_I still hope, and we will fight until the last moment, to
rivendicate our right to live and be free, but all the forces of the
State and of the Money and reaction are deadly against us because we
are libertarian or anarchist._
_I write little of this because you are now a yet to little-boy to
understand this things and other things of which I would like to
reason with you._
_But if you do well, you will grow and understand your father’s and
my case and your father’s and my principles, for which we will soon
be put to death._
_I tell you that for and of all I know of your father, he is not
a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew. One day you
will understand what I am about to tell you: That your father has
sacrificed everything dear and sacred to the human heart and soul for
his fate in liberty and justice for all. That day you will be proud
of your father; and if you come brave enough, you will take his place
in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and you will vindicate
his (our) names and our blood._
_If we have to die now, you shall know, when you will be able to
understand this tragedy in its fullness, how good and brave your
mother has been with you, your father and I, during these eight years
of struggle, sorrow, passion, anguish and agony._
_Even from now you shall be good, brave with your mother, with Ines,
and with Suzy[36]—brave, good Suzy—and do all you can to console and
help them._
_I would like you will also remember me as a comrade and friend of
your father, your mother, Ines, Suzy and you, and I secure you that
neither I have been a criminal, that I have committed no robbery and
no murder, but only fought modestily to abolish crimes from among
mankind and for the liberty of all._
_Remember Dante, each one who will say otherwise of your father and
I, is a lier, insulting innocent death men who have been brave in
their life._
_Remember and know also, Dante, that of your father and I would have
been cowards and hypocrits and rinnegetors of our faith, we would
have not have been put to death. They would not even have convicted a
lebbrous dogs; not even executed a deadly poisoned scorpion on such
evidence as that they framed against us. They would have given a new
trial to a matricide and abitual felon on the evidence we presented
for a new trial._
_Remember, Dante, remember always these things; we are not criminals;
they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new trial; and if
we will be executed after seven years, four months and 17 days of
unspeakable tortures and wrongs, it is for what I have already told
you; because we were for the poor and against the exploitation and
oppression of the man by the man._
_The documents of our case, which you and other ones will collect and
preserve, will proof you that your father, your mother, yourself,
Inez, I and my family are sacrificed by and to a State Reason of the
American Plutocratic reaction._
_The day will come when you will understand the atrocious sense of
the above-written words, in all its fullness. Then you will honor us._
_Now Dante, be brave and good always. I embrace you._
Not until Monday morning did Hill reach Rockland, Maine, and board
the leisurely excursion steamer that finally brought him through the
shredding fog to the granite-edged Isle au Haut. Justice Stone,
sitting on his front porch in his shirtsleeves, received him curtly.
He said he would listen to Hill’s arguments but he could grant no
stay. Another justice might perhaps feel differently.
In Boston, Monday broke sallow and heavy. The still-empty Common
looked frayed and untidy. By nine o’clock the first busloads of
sympathizers began to arrive from New York. The air was lighter
by the time Governor Fuller arrived at his office from Rye Beach
a little before eleven. “A beautiful day,” he said, smiling and
nodding affably to the reporters. One of his first visitors was Edna
St. Vincent Millay, whose poem “Justice Denied in Massachusetts”
had appeared in the New York _Times_ that very morning. Fiorello La
Guardia had come by chartered plane from New York to make a last
appeal to his old congressional colleague, but when he emerged from
the executive chambers he shook his head and told reporters that
there was only one chance in a thousand.
On this last day the governor was willing to keep open house for
any delegation that chose to visit him. To nearly all who so chose
he listened with stiff politeness. Just before lunch the newly
installed state commander of the American Legion appeared to assure
the governor that the Legion stood four-square behind him. Almost
a thousand letters and telegrams arrived at the executive offices
during the day, two thirds of them asking for suspension of the death
sentence.
Late in the morning Luigia and Rosina arrived at Charlestown for
a tear-blurred hour in the death house. Sacco talked to his wife
about Ines and Dante; Vanzetti again recalled the old days in
Villafalletto. Madeiros, who had been lying indifferently on his cot,
chain-smoking, received an unexpected visit from his sister Consuelo.
When she told him that their mother was too overcome to make the
trip, he for the first time showed emotion.
On Saturday there had been a tentative attempt to renew the State
House picketing, and Captain Hibben, Powers Hapgood, James Rorty,
and Katherine Anne Porter had been arrested. Now, as the morning
advanced, pickets with armbands and banners appeared again. The
Scenic Temple served as a supply depot; there pickets assembled,
were grouped in dozens, and sent on to the State House with their
signs, JUSTICE IS CRUCIFIED TODAY, JUSTICE IS DEAD IN MASSACHUSETTS.
All afternoon the line grew, the pickets forming fours as their
ranks increased. The line became an endless chain, its links made
up of girls and sweaty shirtsleeved men from the garment district,
self-conscious intellectuals, a scattering of adolescents welcoming
the chance to challenge authority, and a rank and file of friends
and sympathizers of every class and description. Mrs. Evans was
there. She had aged much since the trial, but with her solid figure
and rimless glasses she still looked the transcendental grandmother.
One of the younger policemen on duty complained that there was not a
good-looking girl in the bunch.
During the course of the afternoon and evening 156 pickets were
arrested. Isaac Don Levine and Mrs. Evans bustled about raising bail
money. Edward Holton James showed up at the Joy Street Station with
his pockets full and bailed away for several hours until he ran out
of both funds and patience, then found himself booed when he returned
to the Scenic Temple to announce that he would bail no more.
The garment workers in the station’s close-packed guardroom sang the
“Internationale,” and afterward everyone joined in the more singable
“Solidarity Forever.” Police Captain McDevitt had long had his eye on
Powers Hapgood. The other pickets might with luck be out on bail in
an hour or so, but McDevitt made a point of turning Powers over to
the State Police, who, instead of arresting him, hurried him off to
the Psychopathic Hospital where he was held for four days.
Crowds formed on the Common side of Beacon Street to stare at the
picket parade. Occasionally someone would dart across the street
to join the line. Superintendent Crowley, with memories of the mob
rising in the police strike of 1919, was determined there would be
no rising today. Halfway down the mall a police company with rifles
was drawn up like a detachment of infantry. Mounted police wove their
horses in and out of the gathering throngs. There were more blue
uniforms on Boston Common than there had been since the Civil War
encampments.
The day wore on. All the public buildings were garrisoned by police.
A squad even occupied the roof of Fuller’s Packard salesroom.
Yet except for the State House picketing and the unusual numbers
crowding the Common there were no incidents in the city. None of the
anticipated bombs went off.
* * * * *
With Hill delayed in Maine, the last-minute legal efforts became a
confusion of volunteer lawyers. Field appealed for a stay to Judge
Sisk—most liberal of the Superior Court judges. Sisk, for all his
obvious sympathy, maintained that he lacked jurisdiction. Surrounded
by the clicking typewriters of Parlor D, Tom O’Connor worked with
John Finerty on a new inclusive habeas corpus motion. Finerty,
former assistant general counsel for the United States Railroad
Administration, was probably the ablest lawyer to take part in the
final proceedings. This thin, long-jawed man in a white linen suit,
who resembled Woodrow Wilson, had dropped in at Parlor D on his way
to spend two weeks by the sea at Cohasset. O’Connor managed to arouse
his interest so that he never went on. He and O’Connor were convinced
the new motion stood its best chance with Federal Judge Anderson.
Unfortunately, Anderson was at Williamstown, in the Berkshires.
O’Connor arranged to have a plane waiting at the East Boston airport,
and all the afternoon he kept trying vainly to get to Anderson by
telephone.
At 2:30 Musmanno brought a copy of the completed Finerty motion to
Charlestown. Vanzetti signed it. Sacco again refused. Both condemned
men were now convinced that nothing could save them. Vanzetti gave
a message to Musmanno for Thompson, whom he asked to see once more.
Thompson, worn out physically and mentally, had left Boston shortly
after the August 10 reprieve for his summer place in South Tamworth,
New Hampshire, but as soon as he received the message he set out at
once for Charlestown.
It was six o’clock before he arrived at the prison. As he entered the
death house, Vanzetti, who had been sitting at his table writing,
stood up at once as if he had been expecting him, smiled warmly, and
reached through the bars to shake hands. Then Thompson took a chair
from one of the guards and sat down just behind the painted warning
line.
They talked tentatively at first. Thompson had heard a rumor that
Vahey and Graham knew Vanzetti was guilty of both crimes and could
prove it if only they were released from their lawyers’ obligation of
secrecy. Vanzetti emphatically and without anger said he had never
told Graham or Vahey anything that would link him to either crime.
Thompson beckoned to a guard to be a witness to their conversation.
For both men it was the most solemn moment of their lives. There was
the quality of a Socratic dialogue to their questions and answers.
The American lawyer’s low, controlled tones were a counterpoint to
the more musical voice of the Italian. As Thompson recalled the scene
afterward it struck him in its more humble way as a recreation of the
_Phaedo_.
_I told Vanzetti that although my belief in his innocence had all
the time been strengthened, both by my study of the evidence and by
my increasing knowledge of his personality, yet there was a chance,
however remote, that I might be mistaken; and that I thought he
ought for my sake, in this closing hour of his life when nothing
could save him, to give me his most solemn reassurance, both with
respect to himself and with respect to Sacco. Vanzetti then told me
quietly and calmly, and with a sincerity which I could not doubt,
that I need have no anxiety about this matter; that both he and Sacco
were absolutely innocent of the South Braintree crime, and that he
was equally innocent of the Bridgewater crime; that while, looking
back, he now realized more clearly than he ever had the grounds of
the suspicion against him and Sacco, he felt that no allowance had
been made for his ignorance of American points of view and habits of
thought, or for his fear as a radical and almost as an outlaw, and
that in reality he was convicted on evidence which would not have
convicted him had he not been an anarchist, so that he was in a very
real sense dying for his cause. He said it was the cause for which he
was prepared to die. He said it was the cause of the upward progress
of humanity, and the elimination of force from the world. He spoke
with calmness, knowledge, and deep feeling. He said he was grateful
to me for what I had done for him. He asked to be remembered to my
wife and son. He spoke with emotion of his sister and of his family.
He asked me to do what I could to clear his name, using the words
“clear my name.”_
Vanzetti, after bringing up the cruelty of his seven years in prison,
spoke of the history of movements for human betterment, among them
early Christianity. Thompson remarked that the essence of the appeal
of Christianity was the supreme confidence shown by Jesus in the
truth of his own views by forgiving, even when on the cross, his
persecutors and slanderers. Many times in his letters Vanzetti had
made comparisons between his own fate and that of Jesus. It was at
these words of Thompson’s that their dialogue, as he recorded it,
reached its climax:
_Now, for the first and only time in the conversation, Vanzetti
showed a feeling of personal resentment against his enemies. He spoke
with eloquence of his sufferings, and asked me whether I thought it
possible that he could forgive those who had persecuted and tortured
him through seven years of inexpressible misery. I told him he knew
how deeply I sympathized with him, and that I had asked him to
reflect upon the career of One infinitely superior to myself and to
him, and upon a force infinitely greater than the force of hate and
revenge. I said that in the long run, the force to which the world
would respond was the force of love and not of hate, and that I
was suggesting to him to forgive his enemies, not for their sakes,
but for his own peace of mind, and also because an example of such
forgiveness would in the end be more powerful to win adherence to his
cause or to a belief in his innocence than anything else that could
be done._
_There was another pause in our conversation. I arose and we stood
gazing at each other for a minute or two in silence. Vanzetti finally
said that he would think of what I had said._
Thompson, the believer, then referred to the possibility of
immortality, saying that he understood the difficulties of such a
belief, yet that if there was personal immortality Vanzetti might
hope to share it. The other did not reply, but spoke briefly of the
evils of present-day society—and the two men parted.
_In this closing scene [Thompson wrote] the impression ... which
had been gaining in my mind for three years, was deepened and
confirmed—that he was a man of powerful mind, and unselfish
disposition, of seasoned character, and of devotion to high ideals.
There was no sign of breaking down or of terror at approaching death.
At parting he gave me a firm clasp of the hand, and a steady glance,
which revealed unmistakably the depth of his feeling and the firmness
of his self-control._
As he was about to leave, Thompson exchanged a few words with Sacco,
who shook hands firmly through the bars, thanked the lawyer for what
he had done, and said he hoped their differences of opinion had not
affected their personal feelings. Like Vanzetti, he showed no sign of
fear.
* * * * *
However darkly anticipated by public officials across the United
States, the day passed off lightly with scarcely more than a few
token strikes. The underlying fear was of another series of bombings.
Police blanketed all the larger cities. In Washington guards with
riot guns patrolled the Capitol. Police used clubs to break up a
meeting of three thousand sympathizers in Philadelphia. The Communist
Sacco-Vanzetti Emergency Committee in New York had called for a
general strike and a mass meeting in the afternoon at Union Square.
Other organizations, such as the American Federation of Labor, the
Central Trades and Labor Council, and the Defense Committee, refused
to participate, and only a few hundred responded to the strike
appeal. Late in the afternoon a crowd of ten thousand gathered in
Union Square under the eyes of five hundred police, some of whom
manned machine guns on the rooftops.
The afternoon and early evening were marked by a frenetic dashing
about of volunteer lawyers. Shortly before three Musmanno filed the
Finerty motion in the Federal Building, and at five o’clock Judge
James Lowell of the United States District Court held a hearing on
it. After listening for over an hour to Finerty, William Schuyler
Jackson, and Benjamin Spellman, a New York lawyer who had aided in
the defense of Harry Thaw, Judge Lowell ruled that nothing had been
brought out to justify his issuing a writ or stay of execution. “The
only question before this court is whether these men were deprived
of their constitutional rights,” the judge snapped at Spellman, who
seemed to irritate him. “Don’t tell me about the public. Stick to the
law. I am sorry to see these two men executed, but it is a question
of law, and it doesn’t make any difference whether ten persons or ten
thousand persons are sorry for them.”
On leaving the courthouse, Finerty drove at once with Jackson for
a third appeal to Justice Holmes. It was twilight by the time they
reached Beverly. The old man listened to them for two hours, said
he appreciated the force of their arguments, but felt—as he had
before—that he had no right to intervene. With this rebuff the legal
side of the case ended. From Beverly, Finerty and Jackson drove to
East Boston in a last attempt to reach Judge Anderson, only to be
told at the airport that the chartered plane could not take off after
dark.
Luigia and Rosina had visited the death house again in the afternoon.
At seven the warden allowed them a farewell visit of five minutes.
Luigia walked up the prison steps, supported by Rosina. The two women
had exhausted their tears. Dry-eyed, they kissed the prisoners for
the last time through the bars.