If they hang Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 9, 1906
U. S. A. – Governors Are Now Empowered to Kidnap Citizens
From the Appeal to Reason of December 8, 1906:
KIDNAPING DECLARED LEGAL
—–U. S. Supreme Court’s Decision Upholds
“Peabody Civilization.”
—–
Chief Justice Harlan, in behalf of the United States supreme court, Monday, December 3, handed down a decision in the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone appeal case, in which the court declined to release the officers of the Western Federation of Miners from the custody of the Idaho authorities, in whose keeping they have been since February of the present year. The prisoners asked for a release on the ground that they were illegally arrested in Colorado, kidnaped and carried into Idaho and there detained without due process of law. At the time of their arrest Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were charged with the assassination of ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg, who was killed on the night of December 30, 1905.
The appeal, taken from the Idaho courts, was argued by Attorneys Darrow and Richardson before the United States supreme court October 9 last. So important were the issues involved that the Washington tribunal sidetracked all other measures and applied itself to an immediate consideration of this Federation appeal.
While the decision, as announced, was not unexpected, the full measure of its meaning does not dawn on the inner consciousness until it is given mature and deliberate thought. Then it is seen that this decision is the culmination of as gigantic a conspiracy against the liberties of the working class as was ever concocted in the annals of time. It is the loud-sounding voice of challenge from the hired mouthpiece of united capitalism, determined to stifle the voice of those who would dare represent those who toil. It is the concrete command of the plutocracy to the radicals of the nation-“Thus far shalt thou go.”
All the events of the last several months point to this undeniable conclusions. The Ruzvlt administration showed its hand when Taft was sent to Idaho to champion the interests of that conscienceless advocate of judicial murder-Governor Gooding. This attitude was given further emphasis by Federal Judge Lewis, of Denver, when he decided that the governors of the states have absolute power of life and death over the citizens thereof. And now comes the climax in this United States supreme court decision.
Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are slated for sacrifice on the altar of capitalism.
That is the immediate meaning of this infamous decision.
Men in the future who would raise their voice in behalf of the working class will do so at the peril of their lives. This decision will ever rise to confront the advocates of freedom with the specters of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, should the workers of this nation permit it to stand. From this time on no man or woman who cherishes the love of humanity and justice is secure of life or liberty on American soil. By legal enactment, the conditions in Colorado are extended to include all America, and our boasted freedom is proclaimed forever gone.
With the handing down of this decision will come the execution of the rest of the conspiracy. The case of the Federation leaders will probably go to trial early in January. Every arrangement has been provided by the prosecution. Southern Idaho has been filled with Pinkerton detectives armed to the teeth, and the United States military fort at Boise has been overhauled and equipped with additional soldiers and ammunition. James McPartland [McParland], the murderer of the Mollie Maguires, smiles confident between a body-guard of two ever-present sleuths.
It has been again declared that Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone shall never leave Idaho alive.
Comrades of the working class, the crisis is drawing near. By your united protests, that have roused this country as it has not been aroused since the civil war, you have expressed the determination that Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone shall not hang. Eugene V. Debs, the loyalest soldier in Freedom’s cause since Wendell Phillips died, has said that “If they hang Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, they’ve got to hang me.” Thousands of men from every state in the union have written their readiness to follow Debs.
The capitalists of the Plunderbund have taken the initiative and have decided to face the workers with Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone as the issue. It is now up to the working class to save itself by preventing the judicial murder of these imprisoned men. The Appeal has thrown itself unreservedly into this fight and will stay by the toilers to the last ditch.
“GET READY, COMRADES, FOR ACTION.”
—–
[Photographs added.]
SOURCES
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town…
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Dec 8, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586769
IMAGES
HMP, McDonald Gooding, Kidnappers of Feb 18, 1906
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon26.html#jessemcdonaldgovernor
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=1342
Molly Maguires, Black Thursday June 21, 1877, “The March to Death” Frank Leslies’s Illustrated Newspaper, Jul 7, 1877
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/maguires/imagesmollies.html
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: U. S. Supreme Court Rules Against Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone in Habeas Corpus Cases
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-u-s-supreme-court-rules-against-moyer-haywood-and-pettibone-in-habeas-corpus-cases/
Hellraisers Journal: President Roosevelt, Secretary Taft, and the Western Federation of Miners
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-president-roosevelt-secretary-taft-and-the-western-federation-of-miners/
Hellraisers Journal: “Man Who Broke Up Molly Maguires [so-called] Says Labor Leaders Will Die.”
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-man-who-broke-molly-maguires-so-called-says-labor-leaders-will-die
The Molly Maguires
–from Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor’s Untold Story.
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America,
Pittsburgh, PA, 1955, pp. 43-58.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/i2l/mollymaguires.html
Tag: Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
https://weneverforget.org/tag/haywood-moyer-pettibone-case/
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs for the Appeal to Reason: “AROUSE, YE SLAVE!”
http://www.caucus99percent.com/tags/arouse-ye-slaves
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884)
http://www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org/wphillips.html
Note: the attempted frame-up of the leaders of the WFM in 1906-07, came straight out of the same play book used to frame up the Martyred Miners of Pennsylvania, 1877-79.
WE NEVER FORGET
John Kehoe
Alex Campbell
Mickey Doyle
Edward Kelly
Hugh McGeehan
Thomas Munley
James Carroll
James Roarity
James Boyle
Thomas Duffy
John Donahue
Thomas Fisher
Patrick Hester
Peter McHugh
Patrick Tully
Peter McManus
Charles Sharpe
Denis Donnelly
Martin Bergan
James McDonald
WE NEVER FORGET