CHAPTER NINETEEN AUGUST 1927 (continued 2)

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.

Meanwhile the indefatigable Musmanno made his way to the executive chambers where he again argued the case from beginning to end before the unwilling ears of Fuller and Wiggin. Finally the governor put him off by telling him to see Attorney General Reading, promising to accept any recommendations Reading might make. While Musmanno was concluding his arguments Luigia and Rosina arrived and he remained as their interpreter. Luigia, her rosary in her hand, knelt on the floor, imploring the governor to save her innocent brother. Rosina begged passionately for the life of her children’s father. Fuller listened to the wildly pleading women for over an hour, his professional courtesy fitting like a mask. “It cannot be expected,” he told them finally, in dismissal, “that you would know the case as the lawyers and judges know it, and I can understand the sorrow that overwhelms you. I wish I could do something to lighten that sorrow, but I can do nothing.”

Musmanno, after leaving the governor, went down the corridor to the attorney general’s office. Reading listened to him with apparent interest while he explained that there were still five United States Supreme Court justices—any one of whom might grant a habeas corpus petition—whom they had not been able to reach. Another respite was necessary to allow the defense the necessary time. Reading said he would let Musmanno know his decision within the hour.

Just before eleven o’clock, the waiting Musmanno was called into the governor’s office. Fuller told him that the attorney general had decided not to recommend a stay of execution. Musmanno, his voice trembling, asked the governor if he would stand for all time on that decision. Fuller replied that he would.

Charlestown prison, with eight hundred police surrounding it, was quiet. Mounted troopers, cap straps under their chins, and supplied with gas masks and tear gas, flanked the arched granite entrance. Fire-department squads had connected their hoses. Marine patrol boats chugged up and down the Miller River adjoining the freight yards.

Again the slum streets about the prison had become a dead zone, roped off for a distance of half a mile. Those who lived within the area were told to stay indoors.

The prison walls and catwalks were lined with machine guns and searchlights. As the darkness came on, the purple-white rays began to crisscross the whole moldering Charlestown area—the Boston and Maine freight yards, the tenements, the slime-banked river. On the far side of Rutherford Avenue, beyond the rows of junk shops, the light bands swept across the forgotten cemetery where John Harvard lay buried, flashing beyond to the Bunker Hill obelisk and the spire of the St. Francis de Sales Church. Then, as if in reply, searchlights on the roof of the State House began to probe the darkness. In the middle distance the elevated cars moved across the Charlestown Bridge like illuminated beetles.

Within the dead zone the quiet was broken only by the clip-clop of horse hoofs on the granite paving blocks and by passing motorcycle patrols. Only as the silence resumed did one become aware of the steady cricketlike tapping of a cobbler’s hammer from a shop on Rutherford Avenue.

As the twilight faded, the tenseness in the city was so pervading that it seemed to go beyond action. Crowds gathered on the Common across from the State House to gaze up silently at the lighted windows of the executive wing. At ten o’clock the pickets reappeared. Again the police hustled them away. Hundreds stood impassively in Newspaper Row to watch the bulletin boards. The radio stations announced that they would stay on the air until after midnight. In City Square, Charlestown, several thousand men and women milled about beyond the barriers, curious rather than partisan, making no attempt at any sort of demonstration.

From the second-floor headquarters of the Hod Carriers’ Union, Mother Bloor, flanked by Fred Beal, attempted to harangue a crowd of several hundred in the street below and was promptly arrested. Beal then set out with a group of fifty militants for Charlestown, placards and banners concealed under their shirts, resolved to break through the barricades and demonstrate in front of the prison itself. As the marchers reached City Square, they brought out their placards and banners, and at once there were cries of “The Reds are coming!” A shot rang out. At the sound the bluecoats stampeded out of the precinct station. The mounted police charged the crowd. A number of people were hurt. Beal and nine others were arrested. “The crowd didn’t beat you up,” the patrolman who had Beal by the collar told him, “But, O boy, wait until you get to the station!”

Inside the prison walls everything was darkened and quiet except for the smoke-filled press room with its clicking typewriters and clattering telegraph keys. As on all execution nights, few of the prisoners were asleep. At ten the electricians arrived to make a final test of the chair. Shortly after eleven Musmanno arrived, his panama hat flopping as he dashed up the steps, tears streaming down his cheeks. The warden would not allow him to see the condemned men.

At 11:15 Warden Hendry, bearing himself with all the official gravity he could muster, walked up the iron stairs into the death house. Vanzetti had been pacing up and down in his cell. At the warden’s approach he stopped. “I am sorry,” Hendry informed him in the customary stereotyped phraseology, “but it is my painful duty to inform you that you have to die tonight.” Vanzetti stood staring at the floor for a moment, then flung his arms out, his eyes glittering. “We must bow to the inevitable,” he whispered.

Sacco was at his desk writing a letter when Hendry repeated the formula. He slumped down in his chair, then in a thin voice asked the warden if he would see that the letter he was writing was mailed to his father in Italy. Hendry promised to mail it himself. In the last cell Madeiros lay on his back with his shoes off and a blanket over him, as if asleep. At the warden’s announcement he neither moved nor spoke. Father Michael Murphy followed the warden into the room and asked hopefully if the prisoners would receive the rites of the church. Vanzetti and Sacco refused. Madeiros did not reply. Sacco thanked Father Murphy and told him he had enjoyed his talks with him. The priest looked dejected when he left. “Well, I guess they don’t want me now,” he told the newspapermen in the press room. The three were the first condemned men in Charlestown’s history to refuse a clergyman.

Shortly before midnight Executioner Elliott, with Warden Hendry and Deputy Warden Hoggsett and the official witnesses, entered the death chamber from a side door. The witnesses were Surgeon General Frank Williams of the Massachusetts State Guard, Medical Examiner Magrath, Dr. McLaughlin, Sheriff Capen, Dr. William Faxon from the Dedham jail, and Dr. Howard Lothrop, a surgeon at the Boston City Hospital. Warden Hendry would allow only one reporter to be present. Lots were drawn in the press room and the choice fell to William Playfair of the Associated Press.

The witnesses ranged themselves along the wall, stony-faced, their voices held to a whisper. In the center of the room the chair stood with its unfastened straps hanging down, under the glare of the overhead lights. Executioner Elliott took his place behind the screen that hid the switch but not his head. Another screen concealed three litters.

Somewhere in the middle distance a clock struck midnight. At 12:03 two guards brought Madeiros into the bright silent room. Supported by a guard on each side he shuffled as if he were walking in his sleep. They guided him to the chair and he sat down and waited like an automaton while they strapped his arms and legs in place, adjusted the electrodes and the headpiece that covered the upper part of his skull, and finally placed a black mask over his eyes. At a nod from Warden Hendry, Elliott pulled the switch. The masked body stiffened, the mouth grimaced, and in a few seconds the witnesses noticed the odor of burning hair. Three times Elliott switched on the current, then Dr. McLaughlin stepped forward, applied his stethoscope, and pronounced Madeiros dead. Deftly the guards placed the body on one of the litters.

At 12:11 Sacco was brought in. Although the guards flanked him, he walked the seventeen steps from his cell to the chair unaided. As they began to adjust the straps he sat bolt upright, casting about wildly with his eyes. Then in the iron tradition of his belief, like so many of his comrades on the gallows before him, he called out in Italian: “Long live anarchy!” With that he grew calmer, and added more quietly in English: “Farewell my wife and child and all my friends.” Only then did he seem to become aware of the witnesses. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. The guards had finished with the straps and the headpiece and the electrodes, and one of them now slipped on the mask. In that last second Sacco found himself beyond wife, children, friends, anarchy, bared to the last basic verity. “Farewell!” he cried out in English as Warden Hendry nodded and the executioner’s hand moved behind the screen, and then in Italian: “Mother!” Elliott increased the current by 300 volts for that sinewy peasant body.

When the guards came to Vanzetti’s cell, he knew that the other two were already dead. With the guards beside him he entered the death chamber, his step firm, his head erect, his gray denim prison trousers flapping slightly from the slits in the sides. Just inside the door he paused near Warden Hendry and said with great precision:

“I wish to say to you that I am innocent. I have never done a crime, some sins, but never any crime. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime, not only this one, but of all, of all. I am an innocent man.”

With that he shook hands with Hendry, Deputy Warden Hoggsett, Dr. McLaughlin, and two of the four guards, then took his place in the chair.

There was still something more. As the guard on his right knelt to adjust the contact pad to his bare leg Vanzetti spoke again, his eyes covered. “I now wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me,” he said gently. Warden Hendry’s eyes were filled with tears as he gave the signal. Afterward he was scarcely able to pronounce the required formula: “Under the law I now pronounce you dead, the sentence of the court having been carried out.”

FOOTNOTES: