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Title: Address to the Court
Author: Louis Lingg
Date: 1886
Language: en
Topics: Haymarket, speech, trial
Source: Retrieved on March 20, 2012 from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/45
Notes: Louis Ling, Address to the Court, Famous Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists (Chicago: 1912). Reprinted in Dave Roediger and Franklin Rosemont, eds., Haymarket Scrapbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1986), 46–47.

Louis Lingg

Address to the Court

Court of Justice! With the same irony with which you have regarded my

efforts to win in this “free land of America,” a livelihood such as

humankind is worthy to enjoy, do you now, after condemning me to death,

concede me the liberty of making a final speech.

I accept your concession; but it is only for the purpose of exposing the

injustice, the calumnies and the outrages which have been heaped upon

me.

You have accused me of murder, and convicted me: What proof have you

brought that I am guilty?

In the first place, you have brought this fellow Seliger to testify

against me. Him I have helped to make bombs, and you have further proven

that with the assistance of another, I took those bombs to No. 58

Clybourn avenue, but what you have not proven—even with the assistance

of your bought “squealer,” Seliger, who would appear to have acted such

a prominent part in the affair—is that any of those bombs were taken to

the haymarket.

A couple of chemists also, have been brought here as specialists, yet

they could only state that the metal of which the haymarket bomb was

made bore a certain resemblance to those bombs of mine, and your Mr.

Ingham has vainly endeavored to deny that the bombs were quite

different. He had to admit that there was a difference of a full half

inch in their diameters, although he suppressed the fact that there was

also a difference of a quarter of an inch in the thickness of the shell.

This is the kind of evidence upon which you have convicted me.

It is not murder, however, of which you have convicted me. The judge has

stated that much only this morning in his resume of the case, and

Grinnell has repeatedly asserted that we were being tried not for

murder, but for anarchy, so the condemnation is—that I am an anarchist!

What is anarchy? This is a subject which my comrades have explained with

sufficient clearness, and it is unnecessary for me to go over it again.

They have told you plainly enough what our aims are. The state’s

attorney, however, has not given you that information. He has merely

criticized and condemned, not the doctrines of anarchy, but our methods

of giving them practical effect, and even here he has maintained a

discreet silence as to the fact that those methods were forced upon us

by the brutality of the police. Grinnell’s own proffered remedy for our

grievances is the ballot and combination of trades unions, and Ingham

has even avowed the desirability of a six-hour movement! But the fact

is, that at every attempt to wield the ballot, at every endeavor to

combine the efforts of workingmen, you have displayed the brutal

violence of the police club, and this is why I have recommended rude

force, to combat the ruder force of the police.

You have charged me with despising “law and order.”What does your “law

and order” amount to? Its representatives are the police, and they have

thieves in their ranks. Here sits Captain Schaack. He has himself

admitted to me that my hat and books have been stolen from him in his

office—stolen by policemen. These are your defenders of property rights!

The detectives again, who arrested me, forced their way into my room

like housebreakers, under false pretenses, giving the name of a

carpenter, Lorenz, of Burlington street. They have sworn that I was

alone in my room, therein perjuring themselves. You have not subpoenaed

this lady, Mrs. Klein, who was present, and could have sworn that the

aforesaid detectives broke into my room under false pretenses, and that

their testimonies are perjured

But let us go further. In Schaack we have a captain of the police, and

he also has perjured himself. He has sworn that I admitted to him being

present at the Monday night meeting, whereas I distinctly informed him

that I was at a carpenters’ meeting at Zepf’s Hall. He has sworn again

that I told him that I also learned to make bombs from Herr Most’s book.

That also is a perjury.

Let us go still a step higher among these representatives of law and

order. Grinnell and his associates have permitted perjury, and I say

that they have done it knowingly. The proof has been adduced by my

counsel, and with my own eyes I have seen Grinnell point out to Gilmer,

eight days before he came upon the stand, the persons of the men whom he

was to swear against.

While I, as I have stated above, believe in force for the sake of

winning for myself and fellow-workmen a livelihood such as men ought to

have, Grinnell, on the other hand, through his police and other rogues,

has suborned perjury in order to murder seven men, of whom I am one.

Grinnell had the pitiful courage here in the courtroom, where I could

not defend myself, to call me a coward! The scoundrel! A fellow who has

leagued himself with a parcel of base, hireling knaves, to bring me to

the gallows. Why? For no earthly reason save a contemptible

selfishness—a desire to “rise in the world to make money,” forsooth.

This wretch—who, by means of the perjuries of other wretches is going to

murder seven men—is the fellow who calls me “coward”! And yet you blame

me for despising such “defenders of the law” such unspeakable

hypocrites!

Anarchy means no domination or authority of one man over another, yet

you call that “disorder.” A system which advocates no such “order” as

shall require the services of rogues and thieves to defend it you call

“disorder.”

The Judge himself was forced to admit that the state’s attorney had not

been able to connect me with the bombthrowing. The latter knows how to

get around it, however. He charges me with being a “conspirator.” How

does he prove it? Simply by declaring the International Working People’s

Association to be a “conspiracy.” I was a member of that body, so he has

the charge securely fastened on me. Excellent! Nothing is too difficult

for the genius of a state’s attorney!

It is hardly incumbent upon me to review the relations which I occupy to

my companions in misfortune. I can say truly and openly that I am not as

intimate with my fellow prisoners as I am with Captain Schaack.

The universal misery, the ravages of the capitalistic hyena have brought

us together in our agitation, not as persons, but as workers in the same

cause. Such is the “conspiracy” of which you have convicted me.

I protest against the conviction, against the decision of the court. I

do not recognize your law, jumbled together as it is by the nobodies of

bygone centuries, and I do not recognize the decision of the court. My

own counsel have conclusively proven from the decisions of equally high

courts that a new trial must be granted us. The state’s attorney quotes

three times as many decisions from perhaps still higher courts to prove

the opposite, and I am convinced that if, in another trial, these

decisions should be supported by twenty-one volumes, they will adduce

one hundred in support of the contrary, if it is anarchists who are to

be tried. And not even under such a law—a law that a schoolboy must

despise—not even by such methods have they been able to “legally”

convict us.

They have suborned perjury to boot.

I tell you frankly and openly, I am for force. I have already told

Captain Schaack, “if they use cannons against us, we shall use dynamite

against them.” I repeat that I am the enemy of the “order”of today, and

I repeat that, with all my powers, so long as breath remains in me, I

shall combat it. I declare again, frankly and openly, that I am in favor

of using force. I have told Captain Schaack, and I stand by it,“if you

cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.” You laugh! Perhaps you

think,“you’ll throw no more bombs”; but let me assure you I die happy on

the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I

have spoken will remember my words; and when you shall have hanged us,

then—mark my words—they will do the bombthrowing! In this hope do I say

to you: I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your

force-propped authority. Hang me for it!