1886 - Detail

May 4, 1886 - The Haymarket riot and bombing occurs in Chicago, Illinois, three days after the start of a general strike in the United States that pushed for an eight hour workday. This act would be followed by additional labor battles for that worker right favored by unions. Later this year, on December 8, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was formed by twenty-five craft unions.



Article by Jason Donovan

There are times within the course of history when a convergence of social, political, financial, and labor turmoil coincides, resulting in fear and tension. Combine this concoction with human emotion and bad decisions while looking through the opaque lens of propaganda. Throw this mixture into a pressure cooker, and often, the long shadow of injustice and death makes its appearance. All these factors combined in the spring of 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, resulting in the Haymarket Tragedy and its reverberating consequences.

Like nearly all things in life, the subject of this monograph did not just occur as a momentary singularity. Quite the opposite, the event has its origins in the post-Civil War political struggles of the Reconstruction Era. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the reins of the reconstruction effort. President Johnson was more amenable to following a more forgiving program on his fellow Southerners. President Johnson’s decisions on this subject splintered the Republican Party. The party split had an effect all over the country, but in Illinois especially. Being the home of President Lincoln, the state had deep roots within the Republican Party. When President Johnson quashed Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull’s legislation for civil rights with power for the Freedman’s Bureau to protect them, Trumball lost support within the Illinois party and the north. The fracturing of the Republican Party was only one aspect of the political environment of 19th-century America as a whole, and Chicago was a microcosm of that whole.

Buy Chronology

Chicago Politics, Labor Rights, and the Anarchists

Politics was complicated in Chicago in the post-war era. During this period, many groups were fighting for their slice of the political market share. One of these groups was the Anarchists. A predominate form of anarchism at this time was that of Anarcho-syndicalism, developed in the late 1880s, which emphasized labor unions to call for general strikes, thus paralyzing the state. Chicago’s anarchists were drawn from immigrant workers who joined the International Working People’s Association (IWPA). The IWPA gained members through distributing materials via an anarchist press and local organizations. The network set up by the IWPA had expanded to 26 local groups that were meeting regularly for lectures and discussions of social questions. In addition to these groups, the anarchist press was busy cranking out at least seven newspapers within the city. The papers knew their audiences; there were editions in German, Czech, Norwegian, and English. All the effort put into organizing was to lay the foundation for a nationwide united front. The Central Labor Union (CLU) acted as an umbrella organization containing some of Chicago’s most prominent unions. (Anarchists). The main labor issue of the day was that of the eight-hour workday.

Many labor topics were being discussed within the unions, but the focus was on the eight-hour workday. Unions and organizations were plentiful in Illinois at this time, many of which were also very large and powerful. One of these labor unions was the Knights of Labor (KOL). The KOL was formed in Philadelphia in 1869 as a secretive organization that guarded its members from retaliation from their employers. The knights experienced a transformation after Terence V. Powderly was elected to head the organization. Powderly refused to begin strikes at the national level thus devolving power to the smaller local and territorial chapters.

Chicago was one of these territories. A factor in starting the labor unrest is the seemingly never-ending cycle of financial fits and crashes. At the time of the Haymarket, the most recent Crash of 1873 had officially ended in 1878. Unlike other cities, Chicago would experience the Great Chicago Fire, which started on 8 October 1871 and burned for roughly two days. This fire obliterated at least 3 square miles of the heart of the city, leaving 300 dead and at least 100,000 without a home.

The city’s rebuilding followed class lines, and the government was used to achieve the desired result of cleansing specific neighborhoods of lower-class, poorer immigrant communities. The city government created segregated neighborhoods along socioeconomic lines by the introduction of new fire codes requiring more expensive materials. These materials were, for most, out of reach before the fire. Now, with the excessive cost of limited materials post-fire, most working-class families were removed to other parts of the city. Due to the astronomical cost of construction materials and the new building codes, the lower classes were even excluded from joining the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, which was the other.

After the fire the nation stepped up to help their fellow citizens. Those funds and supplies were funneled into and distributed by the Chicago Relief Aid Society (CRAS). The Society reinforced the class lines by requiring a membership fee of $5 ($129 as of 2025). Especially in post-fire Chicago, this amount was out of reach of working-class people whose wage was roughly a national average high of $1.95 a day (roughly $49.93 as of 2025). The CRAS was divided into two levels: volunteers and members. The major difference between the two is that members had input on how aid was implemented. One can only imagine life for Chicagoans after the fire stoked the embers that would light a different fire in the years to come.

All the national and local pressures would continue over the next decade. With a continuing push and pull between the rich and poor, wealthy barons and the upper class of Victorian-era America kept a consistent pressure on working-class America. All these aspects would continue to bubble under the surface till May 1886. A strike would set in motion a chain reaction resulting in violence and death whose echoes would reverberate through history and contribute to the labor actions to come. Over the course of that decade, the 1877 railroad strike would occur. The strike was nationwide, partly caused by the effects of the 1873 financial panic. The strike started in West Virginia on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad. Spreading down the rails to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 21 July when a militia opened fire, killing twenty, including three small children. During the strike, the strikers enjoyed public support as they blamed the railroad moguls for the financial crash. The Haymarket tragedy, in contrast, would not enjoy the public’s support.

The Haymarket Bombing

By the spring of 1886, tensions had continued to chug along. Labor was continuing the fight for the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, the government was split between a labor-supporting mayor, Carter Harrison, who was said to be “the common man’s mayor.” Mayor Carter may have received this name in part for his choice of not using the police to break strikes. Opposing the mayor’s stance on labor was Police Inspector John Bonfield, whom the mayor was pressured into appointing. The stage is nearly completely set, i.e. the assassination of Carter Harrison, which would occur in 1893.

A plan for labor demonstrations on 1 May 1886 had been called for two years prior in 1884 by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The federation was building the day up as the kickoff to a national movement to get a proper eight- hour workday. These actions should not have been necessary, seeing there were already laws on the books for an eight-hour workday, but the federal law was not enforced, and for the state law, employees had to sign a waiver in order to get a job. On 1 May, nationwide strikes occurred in support of the eight-hour workday. The marches of that day were peaceful, as were those of the next. The peace turned violent on 3 May when violence between police and strikers erupted at the McCormick Reaper plant, ending with two strikers dead. A protest was called for the very next day at Haymarket Square.

These deaths only stoked the fires of emotion that would result in more death, as leaflets called for revenge. On the evening of 4 May 1886 an eruption of violence would occur. This protest meeting was peaceful early on, to the point that Mayor Harrison stated that the gathering was “tame” after speaking to the crowd himself. The peaceful nature of the assembly convinced the mayor to disband the police reserves for the evening. The situation turned when Police Inspector Bonfield was notified that the speeches at the Haymarket were becoming more inflammatory. Bonfield ordered roughly 180 police into the square to break up the gathering. While at the beginning of the evening, 2,500 people were in attendance, by the time the police entered the square, only 300 were still in attendance, and Samuel Fielden, an anarchist and Methodist lay preacher working in the labor movement, was speaking. Fielden was the end of a line of speakers that evening. The police gave the order to leave, and Fielden replied, “But we are peaceable.” The order was given again to this Fielden said, “Alright, we will go.” At this point in the evening, a faceless individual would affect the national labor movement for years.

As the crowd dispersed, an unknown individual threw a bomb into the police ranks, mortally wounding an officer. Richard Schneirov, in his piece “The Haymarket Bomb in Historical Context,” shows the brutality of the situation when he states, “In a scene of “wild carnage,” the panicked police pulled out their revolvers and fired into the crowd for nearly three minutes. The Haymarket was littered with bodies, and the street pavement was turned red with blood. It is estimated that the police killed seven or eight civilians in the crowd and wounded between thirty and forty others.”

Another sixty-six were injured, and out of these, six would lose their fight to live. Officials would eventually discover that three officers were killed as a result of getting caught in the crossfire. While the remaining three were shot and hit by shards of metal from the bomb. As soon as the incident happened, the state set its spin machine in motion. Starting with the police not informing the newspapers of the crossfire deaths. The lack of information most likely contributed to the papers portraying the striker’s deaths as insignificant.

With the propaganda machine in full swing, the public was worked up into a frenzy, with rioting occurring as the papers rallied for revenge. With the public baying for blood, martial law was declared the next day. The declaration resulted in the homes and offices of prominent labor figures and anarchists being raided. Many people were caught up in the police dragnet, eight of whom would be charged.

In American judicial history, the Haymarket stands out as a great injustice and is a great example of why it is critical to get a fair trial. The defendants were Samual Fielden, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Adolf Fischer, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, Albert Parsons, and August Spies. Each of these men has his own story.

Samual Fielden was an English immigrant records list him as a self-employed teamster. Fielden was leaving the speaker’s area when the bomb went off. He was also the only defendant who sustained a major injury, shot in the knee by a police officer as he fled. Louis Lingg, a carpenter originally from Germany, had only been in the United States for about a year. He was set on his revolutionary path by watching his father have his wages cut and eventually fired after suffering an accident on the job, turning him against capitalism and pushing him into the arms of socialism. He was arrested on 14 May after a struggle with police even though he was not present at the Haymarket that night.

Oscar Neebe was American-born, but soon after his birth, his family returned to their German motherland. He had not been back in the United States long before the Haymarket. Neebe was known as an organizer in the Socialist movement. Michael Schwab took a more active role in Chicago’s labor and political activities. He would start writing for “Arbeiter-Zeitung,” a German language workers newspaper; he would rise to associate editor. The day of the bombing, he had penned an article calling on his readers to “resist the capitalist.” Schwab was at the Haymarket earlier in the evening but was speaking at the Deering Reaper Works at the time the bombing occurred. The police took him into custody at the newspaper’s offices the following morning. Albert Parsons was the other American-born defendant whose family had lived in America since 1632. Parsons followed a long line of social reformers. He started by campaigning for the rights of those previously enslaved and for African American citizens. He would marry a mixed-race woman named Lucy. He continued his activism by being editor of “The Alarm,” the English version of Arbeiter-Zeitung. Parsons equated the plight of slaves to that of workers in a capitalist society. He arrived at the Haymarket at 9 p.m., spoke for an hour, and then headed to Zapf’s Hall. Parsons, upon hearing of the bombing, would leave Chicago and go into hiding till the day of the trial.

Lastly, there is August Spies, a German upholsterer who was fluent in English, German, and French. He worked as the manager of Arbeiter-Zeitung. Reports of his speech state that it "was mild and was not likely to incite violence.” He was present when the bomb went off, being thrown into the crowd by the force of the blast.

The Haymarket Trial

The Haymarket trial began on 16 July 1886 and lasted until 20 August 1886. After less than a day of deliberation, the jury found all defendants guilty. The verdict came down, with all but Neebe receiving the death penalty. Neebe was sentenced to 15 years.

After all appeals were exhausted, even the Supreme Court rejected one. On 6 November 1887, four bombs were found in Lingg’s cell, hurting the public support of the convicted men. Even with this, 41,000 Chicagoans signed their name to a petition presented by The Amnesty Association. The public pressure would pay off on 10 November 1887 when Governor Richard Oglesby commuted the sentences of Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab to life sentences. On the same day, Lingg deleted himself from this mortal plane. The following day, 11 November, the death sentences of Spies, Parson, Fielden, and Engel were carried out at noon. Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab would remain incarcerated until 26 June 1893 when Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned them.

As with many events in history, the Haymarket Affair affected the labor movement throughout the nation. For awhile after the bombing, there was a crackdown on unions and labor activists. Then time passes and people started to see the event no longer as a riot, but as a tragedy, becoming a rallying point of the labor movement. With this switch in attitudes, the hanged men are, by many, no longer seen as criminals but rather martyrs. No matter how you see them, the fact is that they have received no justice from the system. After all these years, one question will remain unanswered: Who threw the bomb? No one was ever identified as the thrower, a blast heard through the years down the generations till today. Can one still hear it? Or maybe the silence of those killed says more. Only time will tell.

Image above: "The Anarchist Riot in Chicago, Dynamite Bomb exploding among the police," 1886, drawing by T. de Thulstrup from sketches and photos furnished by H. Jeaneret, Harper's Weekly. Courtesy Library of Congress. Below: Montage of Haymarket riot scenes; (left) Haymarket Riot, The personnel of the trial, 1886, M. Umbdenstock & Co. (center) Photos of the Haymarket Five Anarchists, (August Spies, A.R. Parsons, Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer), (Riot) Front of Frank Leslie's Illustrated about the bombing and riot," 1886, C. Bunnell, Frank Leslie's Illustrated. All courtesy of the Library of Congress. Source: Peras, Ramiro. “The_Haymarket_Tragedy.” Scribd, 2025; “Mapping History : Industrialization 1870-1930 - World Industrial Production: 1870-1930.” Mappinghistory.uoregon.edu; Grizzanti, Barton. The Immigration Movement from 1880 to Present Day. 2008; Harrington, Kaysie. “Haymarket & Immigration: A Legacy of Anarchist Fear.” ScholarWorks@BGSU, 2016, scholarworks.bgsu.edu; “Political Development in Gilded-Age Illinois | Northern Illinois University Digital Library.”; “Immigration, Labor and Politics: 1878-1884 | Northern Illinois University Digital Library.” Digital.lib.niu.edu; Salzmann, Joshua. “How Chicago Transformed from a Midwestern Outpost Town to a Towering City.” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Oct. 2018; “Anarchism and Its Influence in the 19th and 20th Centuries," Britannica; “Anarchists.” Chicagohistory.org, 2025; “Brief History – Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library" (SSHEL) – U of Illinois Library; The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Knights of Labor, History, Goals, Tactics, & Significance.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2018; “Chicago Fire of 1871, American History, ” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2018; “The Losses by the Fire.” The Great Chicago Fire & the Web of Memory; “Massasoit Libraries: Major American Fires: Great Chicago Fire- 1871.” Massasoit.edu, 2018; Fay, Thomas. “The Chicago Fire of 1871: Recovery and Reinforcement of Class Divisions.” depauw.edu; “Inflation Calculator.” In2013dollars.com; “The Journal of Political Economy. V.13 1905.” HathiTrust; “Carter Harrison (1825-1893) | American Experience | PBS.”; “Assassination of Carter Harrison.” Chicagohistory.org, 2025; “Inspector Bonfield.” Digital Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library; Schneirov, Richard, “The Haymarket Bomb in Historical Context | Northern Illinois University Digital Library.”; Adelman, William J. “The Haymarket Affair.” Illinois Labor History Society; Saelee, Mike. “Research Guides: Haymarket Affair: Topics in Chronicling America: Introduction.” Guides. loc.gov; Thale, Christopher . “Haymarket and May Day.” Chicagohistory.org, 2019; Linder. “Meet the Haymarket Defendants.” Umkc.edu, 2024, law2.umkc.edu; “Vorbote (Chicago, Ill.), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.” Illinois.edu, 2024; “The Haymarket Riot and Trial: A Chronology.” Umkc.edu, 2025, law2.umkc.edu.

History Photo Bomb

Oklahoma Land Rush. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Chief Sitting Bull, (Tatonka-I-Yatanka) Hunkpapa Sioux, circa 1885. Courtesy National Archives.

Timeline Book

Thomas Edison and his phonograph. Courtesy Library of Congress.

ABH Travel Tip

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island can be visited from two locations; Liberty State Park in New Jersey and from New York City. Ferry service takes visitors on a round trip to both locations. Tours of the Statue may be reserved in advance or tickets picked up when buying tickets for the ferry service on a first come, first served basis.

Photo above: Torch and Arm of the Statue of Liberty on display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Photo: Centennial Photographic Co., 1876.

World's Fair History, 1880's

Louisville 1883
New Orleans 1884-5
Cincinnati 1888

For the history of baseball, check out our friends at Stat Geek Baseball with unique stats from 1871 to today you can get nowhere else.