I'll do better than that. I'll post all four of them here:

I grew up in Chicago and have been living in Aachen, Germany, for the past two and a half years. Yesterday, we had the day off for May Day, for which we have the Haymarket Riot to thank. Gov. Altgeld's role in pardoning some of the defendants reminded of me of some columns you'd written about him back in 1999. I found one on line but was unable to find the two previous ones you refer to. Could you perhaps send those to me?

Graveside visit recalls fortitude of former governor

March 15, 1999

The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor

That should have remembered forever . . . remember no more

Every year at about this time, Cook County Associate Judge Howard Fink visits the far northeastern corner of Graceland Cemetery in Uptown to stand for a few minutes by the lonely, weathered obelisk that marks the final resting place of John Peter Altgeld.

"I come partly for me," Fink said Saturday as we stood in the snow by the ground where Altgeld was interred 97 years ago March 12. "It's a reminder that I should always have the courage to do what's right, even if it hurts. And I come partly for him. I don't want him forgotten totally."

He usually comes alone, and in more than 15 years, has almost never seen a sign of other visitors.

Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call,

The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?

The bits of verse are from "The Eagle That Is Forgotten," a 21-line poem about Altgeld composed a decade after his death, when the once pre-eminent political force in Illinois was already slipping into obscurity.

Altgeld?

The name is familiar. A city street just north of Fullerton Avenue. A South Side public housing development and elementary school. The figure on a statue in Lincoln Park.

Fink remembers: Altgeld was a man for the '90s, both the 1890s, when he served four tumultuous years as the Democratic governor of Illinois, and, as it turns out, for the 1990s, a decade in which our state has conspicuously lacked leaders with his vision and bravery in the area of criminal justice.

To give you an idea of Altgeld's bona fides, the most excitable of the right-wing newspapers of his day referred to him variously as the "lying, hypocritical . . . sniveling governor," "a slimy demagogue," an "apologist for murder," a "viper" and a "bloody blackguard."

This same newspaper--hmm, my notes are smudged here and I can't seem to make out its name--was quite exercised about "the scum and refuse of the European population" then making a home in America, and repeatedly blasted Altgeld as an "alien" because he spent the first three months of his life in Germany.

To have drawn the consistent ire of such a publication, you've got to figure he did something right.

He did. He more than tripled the budget of the University of Illinois during his term, beginning its transformation from a modest agricultural college to the world-class institution it is today.

And many historians credit him as the dominant force behind the Chicago Platform, a pro-labor, pro-civil rights creed adopted at the 1896 Democratic convention that gave the party a new direction for the 20th Century.

He also took an extremely unpopular stand against a president of his own party, Grover Cleveland, when Cleveland violated Gov. Altgeld's wishes and sent military troops to Illinois to help break the Pullman strike of 1894.

Altgeld blistered Cleveland for the abuse of federal power, a transgression that many of the day justified or could not recognize due to hatred and fear of the labor movement. Altgeld almost alone saw that Cleveland was improvising on the law and Constitution based upon momentary passions, a far greater threat to the Republic in the long run than a railway workers strike.

As an idealistic, 37-year-old Chicago lawyer in 1884, Altgeld published "Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims," a slim volume whose pleas for legal reform, for rooting out causes of crime instead of simply punishing criminals and for seeking fairness that will breed respect for the law, remain depressingly applicable today. He was particularly critical of brutal law-enforcement tactics that victimized the innocent as well as the guilty.

Nice ideas. But nine years later, in his first months as governor, he was put in a position to turn them into action when asked to re-examine a dubious prosecution that had resulted in a set of extremely popular convictions.

It's what he did at that moment that brings Judge Fink out to Altgeld's grave every year and what inspired him in 1961 to give his newborn son "Altgeld" as a middle name. It's what he did then that earned Altgeld two laudatory paragraphs in John F. Kennedy's 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Profiles in Courage," and makes him worth remembering today.

It's what he did then that I'll retell in tomorrows' column.



Altgeld's legacy shows true impact of 'tough decision'

March 16, 1999

The newspapers, the profiteers, the money-mongers and the Pharisees fought him bitterly, (but) . . . for the maimed and beaten, the sightless and voiceless, he was eyes and ears, and a flaming tongue crying in the wilderness for kindness and humanity and understanding....Clarence Darrow on John Peter Altgeld

Former Illinois Gov. J.P. Altgeld's fondest ambition was to become a United States senator, the highest office to which a foreign-born citizen can aspire. And history records that he knowingly sacrificed that ambition during his first year as governor when he pardoned the three surviving men convicted in the Haymarket Square bombing.

Why did he do it? The convicts were anarchists, a marginal and unpopular lot. And seven Chicago police officers along with at least four civilians had been killed in the May 4, 1886 melee that began when someone from the crowd threw a bomb into an advancing police line that was attempting to disperse a political rally in the old market area near Randolph Street and Des Plaines Avenue in Chicago.

Most of Altgeld's constituents were pleased when four of the defendants were hanged and a fifth killed himself in jail in 1887. So, again, why, six years later, did Altgeld sign his own political death warrant in the form of their pardon?

Three words. He said them emphatically, with the bang of his fist on his desk, when his secretary of state questioned the move: "It is right!"

Sleep softly . . . eagle forgotten . . . under the stone

Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.

These words are from Vachel Lindsay's "The Eagle That Is Forgotten," a poem about Altgeld composed a decade after his death.

Howard Fink brought along a copy of it on his annual trip to Altgeld's gravesite in Graceland Cemetery last weekend. The 63-year-old Cook County associate judge visits the modest monument on or about the anniversary of Altgeld's death, in part to honor Altgeld's record in the areas of labor, education and children, but mostly to reconnect with the spirit of Altgeld's courage in the Haymarket case.

"Everyone faces tough decisions," said the judge. "Altgeld stands for the proposition that you should choose what's right, not necessarily what's good for you."

When Altgeld reviewed Haymarket he saw an appalling miscarriage of justice: A violent incident fueled by inept police work; a series of flimsy murder charges that did not even pretend to be based upon direct evidence; a jury stacked with people proclaiming the guilt of the defendants; and a sham trial conducted with "malicious ferocity."

In case you've forgotten the story, anarchists and other labor activists were holding a peaceful rally at Haymarket to protest the killing of two striking workers by police the previous day. About 200 spectators were still on hand late in the evening and the last speaker was just wrapping up when a nearly equal number of uniformed police marched toward them and commanded them to disperse--even though Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, who'd been monitoring the rally, had a few minutes earlier advised police against such a confrontation.

Someone from within the crowd threw a bomb at the police, then all hell broke loose. Prosecutors didn't have any idea who threw the bomb, so they simply filed murder charges against eight prominent anarchists--some of whom weren't even at the rally--saying that their inflammatory, sometimes violent anti-establishment rhetoric made them as guilty as the unknown bomber.

Such a theory, Altgeld noted in his 18,000-word pardon message, was unprecedented "in all the centuries during which government has been maintained . . . and crime has been punished."

He weathered months of bitter, public attacks for freeing the men, and though he maintained some prestige in the Democratic party, he was beaten in a re-election bid in 1896 and returned, broke, to private life. He died six years later at age 54, and to most people today is little more than the name on a Chicago street, a housing development and a few school buildings.

But the end of Lindsay's poem gives hope to those who admire his legacy:

Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame--

To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.

To live in mankind, far, far more . . . than to live in a name.

A generous spirit, Altgeld had wisdom to share

March 26, 1999

'It is a curious and sad fact that in the long, weary upward march of the human race there was scarcely ever an act proposed for the protection, emancipation or elevation of the poor but met with the most violent opposition from the so-called better classes, as well as from statesmen and philosophers and from many of the clergy."

These are the words of John Peter Altgeld, the one-term Democratic governor of Illinois in the 1890s to whose story I recently devoted two columns. Though largely forgotten today, Altgeld was a courageous leader whose powerful sentiments on criminal justice, labor and the rights of women, children and the poor still resonate today.

Yet despite Altgeld's eloquence and the continuing relevance of his words, you seldom if ever find him in the index of quotation dictionaries--an oversight I'm addressing today by devoting this column to highlights from Altgeld's Greatest Hits, a collection of my favorite passages from his speeches, letters and other writings.

"Self-denial and self-control are essential to achievement. Great endurance is impossible where there is great indulgence. . . . The appetites give not inspiration and kindle no fires, and their free gratification weakens the body and chokes the soul."

"It is the boy and girl who grow up on the streets or amid squalor and misery at home whose path seems forever to wind toward the prison door, and whatever system will train the youth or will let light into the hovels, cellars and garrets where children are growing up, will reduce the ranks of criminals."

"The doctrine that might makes right has covered the earth with misery. While it crushes the weak, it also destroys the strong. Every deceit, every cruelty, every wrong, reaches back sooner or later and crushes its author. Justice is moral health, bringing happiness, wrong is moral disease, bringing mortal death."

"(The political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson) was the first-born son of the new age of liberty and human progress, while (the political philosophy of Democratic President Grover Cleveland) is the slimy offspring of that unhallowed marriage between Standard Oil and Wall Street. Jeffersonism brought liberty, prosperity and greatness to our country because it gave its benediction to the great toiling and producing masses, while Clevelandism has put its heel upon the neck of our people, has increased the burdens and the sorrows of the men who toil, and has fattened a horde of vultures that are eating the vitals of the nation. . . . Jefferson belonged to the American people; Cleveland to the men who devour widows' homes."

"There are thousands of men in this state who have great fortunes invested in stocks, bonds and other forms of personal property upon which they do not pay a dollar (in taxes), yet they enjoy all . . . of the advantages of government. . . . Curiously enough, these are very often the men who have the most to say about patriotism and the duties of citizenship."

"(Houses, lands, offices and emoluments) offer nothing that is worthy of a high ambition. Enjoyed to their fullest, they leave you hard, wrinkled and miserable. Get all they can give and the hand will be empty, the mind hungry, and the soul shriveled."

"Will not every one of (those subjected to police brutality) feel the indignity to which he or she has been subjected while life lasts? . . . Will they not look on this whole machinery as their enemy and take a secret delight in seeing it thwarted? . . . Remember, brutal treatment brutalizes and thus prepares for crime."

"It appears to be taken for granted that it is a principle of American jurisprudence that men who are victims of a popular outcry are not entitled to a fair trial."

"It is an insult to talk . . . about laziness or shiftlessness--expressions which are constantly on the tongues of people who started in life with good brains, good training and excellent advantages, and who are now well-housed, well-clothed and well-fed, who know nothing about the actual conditions or wants of the poor . . ."

"No man can examine the great penal system of this country without being astounded at its magnitude, its cost and its unsatisfactory results."

"Wrong thrives in bad light and foul air. Turn the sunlight of intelligence on an evil long enough, and it will dissolve it."



Illinois' 'Eagle' not remembered but not forgotten

March 9, 2002

One hundred years ago Monday, John Peter Altgeld took the train from Chicago to Joliet and, standing on unsteady legs, delivered a speech denouncing the British treatment of the Dutch settlers in South Africa.

The 54-year-old former Illinois governor closed with a typical, eloquent flourish: "Wrong may seem to triumph. Right may seem to be defeated. But the gravitation of eternal justice is upward toward the throne of God," he said. "Any political institution, if it is to endure, must be plumb with that line of justice."

He complained of dizziness as he was leaving the stage and collapsed before he reached the wings. He had a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died early the next morning.

Gone was one of the true giants of the 19th Century, a figure of such principle and courage that few of today's politicians are fit even to invoke his name.

Yet just 10 years after his death, Altgeld had slipped into such obscurity that writer Vachel Lindsay composed "The Eagle That is Forgotten" a 21-line poem in which he charged that, "The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor/That should have remembered forever ... remember no more."

It's no longer accurate to say that J.P. Altgeld is forgotten. A statue of him stands in Lincoln Park, and his name is a North Side street, a South Side public housing development, a Chicago public school and various college buildings in Illinois.

He rated two paragraphs in John F. Kennedy's 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Profiles in Courage." A recent play by George Crowe, "The American," adapted a 1946 fictionalized account of Altgeld's life, and "The Eagle Remembered," a 1999 award-winning documentary produced at Northern Illinois University, updated Harry Barnard's definitive 1938 biography, "Eagle Forgotten."

But it is accurate to say that Altgeld is inadequately celebrated.

He took very unpopular but historically vindicated stands in favor of the rights of working people, racial minorities, children and women. He argued passionately to reform a broken justice system, and in the signal act of his public career, he sacrificed his political future to pardon the three surviving men convicted of murder after the 1886 Haymarket tragedy.

Seven Chicago police officers and at least four civilians had been killed in the melee, but the subsequent trials were shams in which prosecutors introduced little direct evidence and the jury was stacked with men who already had proclaimed the guilt of the defendants, some of whom weren't even present when the labor rally got out of hand.

Altgeld pounded his desk when asked why he had issued the pardons in 1893 that all but destroyed his chance for a second term. "It is right!" he said.

We ought to have an Altgeld Day in Illinois--not a holiday from school, but a day on which students and others reflect on this man, his words, his example. The centennial of his death Tuesday should be an occasion for assemblies and convocations throughout the state.

But the Chicago Historical Society, the Illinois State Historical Society and the Illinois Labor History Society have nothing planned. Neither does the Mayor's Office of Special Events in Chicago.

Two brothers who say they are distant relatives of Altgeld--German Altgelt, 55, of Goshen, Ind., and Carlos Altgelt, 61, of Detroit (the different spelling of the last name is a long story)--began last May trying to drum up interest in an official memorial service here but had no luck. They plan to visit Altgeld's gravesite in Graceland Cemetery on Sunday to pay their respects.

It's been left to retired University of Illinois geophysicist Werner Baur, an Altgeld buff, to mount the only formal memorial program. A gathering 7 p.m. Monday at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library in Baur's hometown of Western Springs will feature readings and a showing of the NIU documentary. The library will feature an exhibit on Altgeld through the end of the month.

On March 12 for nearly 20 years, Cook County Associate Judge Howard Fink, has visited the obelisk in Graceland marking Altgeld's final resting site. Usually the judge is alone, but Tuesday, Baur and other Altgeld admirers will meet him at 11:30 a.m. for an impromptu remembrance.