Lincoln in His Grave
by Peter Orner

When U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the other day that "Lincoln would roll over in his grave" if he knew what Governor Blago was up to, I had to scoff at Fitzgerald's lame insight into Lincoln's character. Blago would have scandalized him? Lincoln wasn't such a prig. He's sleeping fairly soundly on his grave on the hill. And if he is awake he's worried about Iraq or Darfur or what will happen when GM implodes, but not Blago. Only Blagojevich himself would have the chutzpah to actually believe that.

We did, once, have a governor of Illinois who actually had a little integrity and a lot more gumption and maybe this is the time to bring his name back up before we forget about him again:

If I decide they are innocent, I will pardon them if I never hold office another day! -John Peter Altgeld.

Chicago, the night of May 4, 1886. Haymarket Square. A march and rally to support workers striking for an eight-hour day and to protest the killing of two striking workers murdered the day before.

At around ten o'clock that night, the police broke up the rally and someone--it has never been determined whom--threw a bomb that killed seven policemen. But the law had to hang somebody for it. Eight men (anarchists!) were rounded up. Seven received death sentences, another got fifteen years. Eventually four were hanged and one committed suicide in prison.

It was John Peter Altgeld--a Chicagoan who became governor in 1893--who pardoned the remaining three. In a statement accompanying the pardons he wrote "... until the State proves from whose hands the bomb came, it is impossible to show any connection between the man who threw it and these defendants."

Needless to say this legal reasoning didn't endear Altgeld to the country. According to the book Altgeld's America by Ray Ginger, The Washington Post said that Altgeld, a German-American, was an "alien himself" and that he had "little or no stake in the problem of American social evolution." The New York Times said that Altgeld would have developed into an out-and-out anarchist himself if his lucky real estate speculations had not turned the course of his natural tendencies. And the Toledo Blade really stuck it to him. "Governor Altgeld has encouraged anarchy, rapine and the overthrow of civilization." Rapine? Altgeld's political career was toast after that.

Another forgotten once-famous American, Vachel Lindsay, wrote a poem about Governor Altgeld, a bit of which I quote here:

Where is Altgeld, brave as the truth,
Whose name the few still say with tears?
Gone to join the ironies with Old John Brown,
Whose fame rings loud for a thousand years.

Even so, for all his courage and idealism, Altgeld was still a real Chicagoan. His hold on the spoils of Democratic patronage would have impressed both Mayor Daleys and maybe even Governor Blagojevich himself. So maybe even Altgeld wouldn't have rolled over in his grave last week...