Leon Czolgosz

“ CZOLGOSZ, LEON, an American assassin; born about 1874, of Polish-German ancestry; worked at various trades in the United States and became affiliated with anarchists through the teachings of Emma Goldman (q. v.) ”

“ Czolgosz did not show any signs of fear and he did not tremble or turn pale; he walked into the death room between two men, and walked with a firm step. He stumbled as he came into the room but did not fall, nor did his knees weaken. I was quite surprised at his demeanor, as was everyone else, I should say. He was perfectly strong and calm. ”

“ In time he became well known among Anarchists in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, not only as a Socialist, but as an Anarchist of the most bitter type.
After returning to Cleveland from Chicago he went to work in the wire mills in Newburg, a suburb of Cleveland.
About two weeks previous to his fearful crime, Czolgosz attended a meeting of Socialists in Cleveland, at which a lecture was given by Emma Goldman, the woman whose anarchistic doctrines have made her notorious all over the country. The extermination of rulers of people is part of her creed. ”

“ The question to the intelligent social student is not whether the acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle, furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought, outraged souls of men like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount of persecution, of hounding, of repression, can stay this social phenomenon. ”

“ You sympathize with Czolgosz, yet you would nurse the man he tried to kill." "As a reporter you aren't expected to understand human complexities," I informed him. "Now listen and see if you can get it. The boy in Buffalo is a creature at bay. Millions of people are ready to spring on him and tear him limb from limb. He committed the act for no personal reasons or gain. He did it for what is his ideal: the good of the people. That is why my sympathies are with him. On the other hand," I continued, "William McKinley, suffering and probably near death, is merely a human being to me now. ”

“ I confided to Ed, "to send somebody to Buffalo to see Czolgosz. Possibly something can be done for him. We also ought to organize a mass meeting at once." He stared at me in bewilderment. "My dear," he said, shaking his head, "you are evidently not aware of the panic in the city. No hall in New York can be had and no one except yourself would be willing to speak for Czolgosz." "But no one is expected to eulogize his act!" I argued; "surely there must be a few people in the radical ranks who are capable of sympathy for a doomed human being." ”

“ Leon held on, and after carefully feeling his way came upon several Union men who were gathered about a rebel who had been shot from his horse. One of the Union men he recognized as Bud McCoy, but who the others were he didn’t know.
“Halloo! there. You licked them, didn’t you?”
“Well, I’ll be dog-gone!” exclaimed the man, as he turned about and saw Leon advancing upon him through the bushes. “Where have you been? Your pap has been in a heap of worry about you.”
“And well he might be,” said Leon. “I 350have been a prisoner. Come on, Ballard; it’s all right.” ”

“ His gaze being directed toward the gate through which he had entered the day before, he did not fail to see the neatly dressed young civilian who walked briskly up the hill and stopped to speak to the sentry.
At the sight of him Leon started up, and even attempted to get upon his feet; but he was so weak that he fell back upon the steps again.
"I thought at first it was Oscar Preston," [Pg 372] said he. "He looks like him, walks like him, and dresses like him. How much good the sight of one familiar face would do me! I wish I was at Oscar's side this minute. ”

“ Leon had a good many hard things to say [Pg 23] about Oscar while he was engaged in repairing damages, and when he found how completely all his care and patient labor had been undone by the despised market-shooter, he grew angrier than ever.
"All the foxes he catches with that hound this winter he can carry in one of his vest pockets!" declared Leon, as he trimmed the branches off a sapling with his knife. "The very first time I get within range of him, I'll fill him so full of holes that he will answer for a window! I don't care if Oscar sees me when I do it, either." ”

“ Giddings, who was just putting the finishing touches on his brush shanty preparatory to getting his family under it. He looked up when he saw his father approaching, and he had never seen him look so white before; but he was warned by the signal his father made him, and so he didn’t say a word. His mother handed him the will when he entered their brush lean-to, and in less time than it takes to tell it Leon was master of its contents.
“A hundred thousand dollars!” he gasped.
“Sh! Not so loud,” cautioned his mother. “You don’t want everybody to know it, do you? ”

“ Léon talked of tactics, whilst Doctor Juillerat stuck to principles. According to the latter, the middle classes had had their day; they were an obstacle in the road of the Revolution; now that they had acquired property, they barred the future with greater obstinacy and blindness than the old nobility.
“You are afraid of everything; you go in for the very worst reaction the moment you fancy yourself threatened!”
At this Campardon flew into a passion. ”

“ Max remarked, "but I am happy the letter came too late. Your situation is serious enough without Mr. Hearst to make it worse."
Another visitor was a lawyer from Clarence Darrow's office. He had come to warn me that I was hurting my case by my persistent defense of Czolgosz; the man was crazy and I should admit it. "No prominent attorney will accept your defense if you ally yourself with the assassin of the President," he assured me; "in fact, you stand in imminent danger of being held as an accessory to the crime." ”

“ He asked me to give him a detailed account of my movements from May 5, when I had first met Czolgosz, until the day of my arrest in Chicago. I gave him the requested information, but without mentioning my visit to Sasha or the names of the comrades who had been my hosts. As there was no longer any need of shielding Dr. Kaplan, the Isaaks, or Hippolyte. I was in a position to give practically a complete account. When I concluded --- what I said being taken down in shorthand --- Chief O'Neill remarked: "Unless you're a very clever actress, you are certainly innocent. ”

“ Vaguely surprised, yet too stupefied to realise that his rambling words might have worked serious mischief, Zouche gazed blinkingly on his retreating figure.
“The same old story!” he muttered, with a foolish laugh; “Always a woman in it! He has won leadership and power,—he has secured the friendship of a King,—but if the King is his rival in matters of love—ah!—that is a worse danger for the Throne than the spread of Socialism!” ”

“ He was just such a man 150as Leon said he was—to the manor born. He didn’t act as though he considered himself better than other men simply because he was President. Dawson took off his hat, while the other men did not remove theirs. He followed Leon to a corner in which several stand of fire-arms were stowed, and assisted him in picking out his own weapons. Leon gave him the sword and revolver, and motioned him to buckle them around him, while with the carbine in his hand he approached the President’s chair. When he got through talking with the men he looked up to see what Leon had to say. ”

“ Czolgosz was not an anarchist, his deed had done the movement an irreparable injury, our American comrades insisted. Most of the Jewish anarchists, even, expressed similar views. Yanofsky, editor of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, went still further. He kept up a campaign against Czolgosz, also denouncing me as an irresponsible person and declaring that he would never again speak from the same platform with me. The only ones who had not lost their heads were of the Latin groups, the Italian, Spanish, and French anarchists. ”

“ Sprague, when Leon had explained things to him, “and I don’t see the need of keeping them under guard any longer; do you, Knight?”
“No, I don’t. I say let them out.”
“Well, I will go back with you and turn them loose,” said Mr. Sprague. “That will be the way we’ll work it. As fast as any rebels come in here and say they are on our side we’ll take their weapons and horses away from them, if they have any, and hold them until they prove that they are just as they should be.”
“Well, what do you say to my going down to Dawson’s house after his mother?” said Leon. ”

“ Leon didn’t make any reply. He knew now that he was beyond all reach of help, and after he got something to eat—that was the first thing on the programme—he must make up his mind to face “our officers,” who wouldn’t be apt to treat him any too well. But first one house was passed and then another, and as neither Dan nor Cale had the courage to go in and beg something to eat, Leon finally gave it up as a bad job, and thought he would have to go on to Mobile before he could get a mouthful to stay his appetite. At last they came along to a place that Leon remembered. ”

“ Every man sat motionless and mute, listening; Paul Zouche, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as in a dream,—Johan Zegota’s hard, plain and careworn face growing softer and quieter in its expression,—while Sergius Thord, leaning on one elbow, covered his brow with one hand to shade the lines of sorrow there. ”

“ Zog is always careful to be well guarded, for he fears the approach of an enemy. What this enemy can be to terrify the great magician I do not know, but Zog is always afraid and never leaves an entrance unguarded. Besides, it is an enchanted castle, you know, and none in the ocean can see it unless Zog wishes him to. So it will be very hard for his enemy to find him."
"We wish to escape," said Clia. "Will you help us, Sacho?" ”

“ Taine gone, and Renan, and Symonds, and Tennyson, and Browning; the suns go swiftly out, and I see no suns to follow, nothing but a universal twilight of the demi-divinities, with parties like you and me and Lang beating on toy drums and playing on penny whistles about glow-worms. But Zola is big anyway; he has plenty in his belly; too much, that is all; he wrote the Débâcle and he wrote La Bête humaine, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I ever read to an end. ”

“ Moreover, since he had been in Zog's castle these were the first strangers to enter his workshop, so he welcomed them in his own gruff way.
The queen asked him if he was happy, and he shook his head and replied, "It isn't like Calcutta, where I used to work in gold before I was wrecked at sea and nearly drowned. Zog rescued me and brought me here a slave. It is a stupid life we lead, doing the same things over and over every day, but perhaps it is better than being dead. ”

“ The second attempt was grandly made, and the fight lasted a little longer than it did at first; but the dismounted men were quickly picked off, the cavalry began dropping here and there, and finally, without a word from anybody, they all took to their heels. This time there was nothing said about pursuit, for the Union men had their blood up, and nobody could 423have controlled them. By the time the rebels were in the woods the Union men had mounted their horses and started after them. Leon was in this exploit, and his father did not tell him to stay behind. ”

“ In the blackest hour, when none believed "the king should have his own again;" in the deadliest fray and in the snow-bound trench, they waved the sword of command, and the only equality they had with their men was who should fight the furthest.
But here were gentlemen born—men of worth and wealth, education and fashion—delving side by side with the veriest drudge; fighting as only gentlemen can fight, and then working as gentlemen never worked before! ”

“ The great magician Zog never slept. He was always watchful and alert. Some strange power warned him that his prisoners were about to escape. Scarcely had the four left the castle by the broken window when the monster stepped from a doorway below and saw them. Instantly he blew upon a golden whistle, and at the summons a band of wolf-fish appeared and dashed after the prisoners. These creatures swam so swiftly that soon they were between the fugitives and the dome, and then they turned and with wicked eyes and sharp fangs began a fierce attack upon the mermaids and the earth dwellers. ”

“ While he is angry he is wasting time, but that will not help you. Take care not to waste any time yourselves."
"Do you know what Zog intends to do to us next?" asked Princess Clia.
"No," said Sacho, "but it is reasonable to guess that, being evil, he intends evil. He never intends to do good, I assure you." Then the boy went away.
"I am no longer afraid," declared the Mermaid Queen when they were alone. "When I have bestowed certain fairy powers upon this golden sword, it will fight its way against any who dare oppose us, and even Zog himself will not care to face so powerful a weapon. ”

“ Zouche gave a short laugh.
“Always love me! Me! Well!—what strange things children will say, not knowing in the least what they mean!”
He gave a vague salute to the entire company, and walked out of the tavern with drooping head. Others followed him,—every man in going, shook hands with Lotys and Sergius Thord,—the lamps were extinguished, and the landlord standing in the porch of his tavern watched them all file out, and bade them all a cordial farewell. ”