Death and Legacy
Two of the defendants, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden, asked for clemency and their sentences were commuted to life in prison on November 10, 1887, by Governor Richard James Oglesby. They were pardoned and released on June 26, 1893, by John Peter Altgeld, the governor of Illinois.
Of the remaining five, Louis Lingg killed himself in his cell with a blasting cap concealed in a cigar on November 10, 1887. Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hanged the next day, November 11, 1887.
As he faced his demise on the gallows, Spies shouted, "the day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."
International Workers' Day is celebrated to commemorate the Haymarket affair.
Read more about this topic: August Spies
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or legacy:
“and so this tree—
Oh, that such our death may be!—
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)