Nicola Sacco - The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti

*In this attempted hold-up at Bridgewater the police at first sought to implicate both men, after their joint arrest on May 5, 1920. But Sacco was able to prove an invincible alibi, and the charge was therefore dropped against him. Vanzetti was a fish-peddler and hence had only his customers as alibi witnesses. While Sacco was held in Dedham Jail awaiting trial with Vanzetti on the South Braintree murder charge, the Bridgewater charge against Vanzetti was tried at Plymouth, Mass., in JuneJuly, 1920, before Judge Thayer.

. Sacco was at this time working in the factory of the Milford Shoe Company. He worked there from 1909 to 1917.

. Harry Dragan of N. Tonawanda, N.Y.

. Li Pei Kan of Shanghai, China, a student at the Collge de Chateau Thierry, Aisne, France, during the last years of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. He wrote several pamphlets on the case in Chinese, the principal one being On the Scaffold.

. The Story of a Proletarian Life , an account of his own life written in Italian by Vanzetti during the first years of his imprisonment and published in a translation by Eugene Lyons in 1924 by the Defense Committee.

. John Vahey of Plymouth, Vanzettis counsel at the Plymouth trial and later Katzmanns partner; James H. Graham, Saccos first counsel and associated with Vahey in the defense of Vanzetti at Plymouth; Fred G. Katzmann, prosecutor of Vanzetti at the Plymouth and Dedham trials in his capacity as district attorney of Norfolk and Plymouth Counties.

. This note passed through the hands of Warden Hendry of State Prison to counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti who conveyed it to the Defense Committee. The handwriting in it is exceedingly jagged and irregular, unlike Vanzettis usual handwriting, and the spelling is unusually imperfect. It was written immediately after Vanzetti learned of the Governors decision, which was issued the night of August 3, 1927.

. Faithful friend of Mrs. Sacco, with whom she and her children lived during the last years of the case.

. H. W. L. Dana of Cambridge, Mass., formerly of the Harvard faculty, now lecturer at the New School for Social Research, New York City.

. At the trial Saccos employer testified as follows about him: he was a very steady worker. He worked very steady from seven in the morning until quitting time at night and was on the job every day that you could expect any healthy man to work. There was times when he was two or three hours late on account of sickness, but outside of his getting through and talking of going to the old country, he was absolutely on the job every day.

. In an account of the joint trial of Sacco and Vanzetti the details of Vanzettis separate trial cannot find a place, but Vanzettis prosecution for the Bridgewater job grew out of his arrest for, and was merely a phase of, the Braintree affair. The evidence of identification of Vanzetti in the Bridgewater case bordered on the frivolous, reaching its climax in the testimony of a little newsboy who, from behind the telegraph pole to which he had run for refuge during the shooting, had caught a glimpse of the criminal and knew by the way he ran he was a foreigner. Vanzetti was a foreigner, so of course it was Vanzetti! There were also found on Vanzettis person, four months after the Bridgewater attempt, several shells, one of which was claimed to be of a type similar to a shell found at the scene of the Bridgewater crime. The innocent possession of these shells was accounted for at the Dedham trial. More than twenty people swore to having seen Vanzetti in Plymouth on December 24, among them those who remembered buying eels from him for the Christmas Eve feasts. Of course all these witnesses were Italians. But the fact that Vanzetti bought eels for his Christmas sales was subsequently established by incontestable documentary evidence. The circumstances of the trial are sufficiently revealed by the fact that Vanzetti, protesting innocence, was warned by his counsel against taking the witness stand for fear his radical opinions would be brought out and tell against him disastrously. From a verdict of conviction counsel took no appeal. The judge and district attorney were Judge Webster Thayer and Mr. Katzmann, as also in the Braintree trial. The Bridgewater conviction was played up with the most lurid publicity when Vanzetti faced his trial for the Braintree crime.

. Some time after the trial this interpreter was convicted of larceny.

. Counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti at the Dedham trial.

. The manifesto ran as follows:
You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak. Hourdayhall. Admission free. Freedom of discussion to all. Take the ladies with you.

. It is credibly reported that when, a few hours later, Vanzetti was about to step in the chair, he paused, shook hands with the Warden and Deputy Warden and the guards, thanked them for their kindness to him, and, turning to the spectators, asked them to remember that he forgave some of his enemies.

. I afterward talked with the prison guard to whom I have referred in this paper. He told me that after he returned to his seat he heard all that was said by Vanzetti and myself. The room was quiet and no other persons were talking. I showed the guard my complete notes of the interview, including what Vanzetti had told me about Messrs. Vahey and Graham. He read the notes carefully and said that they corresponded entirely with his memory except that I had omitted a remark made by Vanzetti about women and children. I then remembered the remark and added it to my memorandum.

. A group formed after the original Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee had disagreed with Mr. Moore so that they could no longer work together. The new group disbanded a few months after forming, and several of its members joined the Defense Committee.

. Aldino Felicani, a printer and friend of both men, who founded the Defense Committee; Felice Guadagni, a radical professor, one of his early helpers.

. Sacco was committed for observation to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital on March 17, 1923, at the end of a 31-day hunger strike. On April 20, an order was issued for his commitment to the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminal Insane. He remained in Bridgewater till early fall and was then returned to the Dedham Jail.

. A family name often used by Sacco instead of Nicola or Nick. He was christened Ferdinando, but adopted his elder brothers name, Nicola, when that brother died.

. Amleto Fabbri, Italian shoe-worker, secretary of the Defense Committee from 1924 to 1926.

. Mrs. Arthur A. Shurtleff of Boston.

. Mary Donovan, who became recording secretary of the Defense Committee in 1924.

. Leonard Abbott of New York, an anarchist friend.

. Bartolomeo Vanzetti. After their joint arrest, Vanzetti was sent to Plymouth, and Sacco to Dedham Jail. Following his conviction for the Bridgewater hold-up, Vanzetti was committed to Charlestown Prison. Sacco remained at Dedham, save for the time spent in Bridgewater Hospital, until July 1, 1927, when he was removed to Charlestown State Prison. In the spring of 1923, following a 31-day hunger strike, he was taken to the Boston Psychopathic Hospital for observation and thereafter committed to the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminal Insane, where he spent several months.
The two men were therefore separated during most of their seven years imprisonment. They saw each other daily during the trial, May 31 to July 14, 1921, and during the four brief periods when arguments were heard on motions for a new trial. At such times Vanzetti was transferred from Charlestown to Dedham. After sentence was pronounced, April 9, 1927, they were together until the endin Dedham until July 1, 1927, and in Charlestown thereafter till their execution a few minutes after midnight of August 22, 1927.