APPEALS AND EXECUTION
The defense appealed unsuccessfully to the Illinois Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court.
Among many others, Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, took on the responsibility of appealing to Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby. The demands for clemency led Oglesby to change the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment.
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However, just before the sentences were commuted, Lingg committed suicide in his cell.
Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel had all refused to beg for mercy, and thus were hung the next day on November 11, 1887.
The funeral procession drew a crowd of 200,000.
In June of 1893, 60,000 petitioned the new Illinois governor, John P. Altgeld, who pardoned the three remaining men, even though the majority of the public remained hostile to organized labor.
"I am convinced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case... and I, therefore, grant an absolute pardon to Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab this 26th day of June, 1893."
--- Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld in "Reasons for Pardoning Fielden, Neebe and Schwab."
"A Governor elected by the greatest personal triumph of any Governor ever chosen by the State., he fearlessly and knowingly bared his devoted head to the fiercest, most vindictive criticism ever heaped upon a public man, because he loved justice and dared to do the right... He so loved justice and truth and liberty and righteousness that all the terrors that the earth could hold were less than the condemnation of his own conscience for an act that was cowardly or mean..."
--- Address of Clarence Darrow at the Funeral of John P. Altgeld, March 14 1902.