Compare And Contrast Sacco And Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Sacco & Vanzetti: Dividing a Nation

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-born immigrants to the United States, affected the entire nation for years based on their actions from a single day. One simple trial sent ripples across the country as it pitted Americans against each other. The Sacco-Vanzetti court case provided a snapshot to Americans of two, Italian immigrant anarchists, their supposed heist and murders, and showed the divisive nature of a simple court case.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists, were open about their political and social ideals. They were known by many people to be anarchists. This belief of anarchism was not unpopular during the 1920s, but it may have led to their eventual demise (Linder).

Following World War I, the people of the United States were wary of foreigners, especially those who did not believe in democracy. This Red Scare mindset worked against Sacco and Vanzetti later on. The men had feared deportation by the Department of Justice and had even evaded the draft (“Sacco-Vanzetti Case”). Many people believed Sacco and Vanzetti’s lifestyles led to their future problems.
Sacco and Vanzetti executed a well thought out plan to steal thousands of dollars in payroll money in Braintree, Maryland. On April 16th, 1920, the two men shot a paymaster and his guard before they could transport the money. The men escaped in a dark blue touring car with the payroll boxes containing nearly $30,000 in cash (Linder). Although the men escaped, many pedestrians witnessed the crimes. The car was found in a ditch several days later, but the men were not found. After the investigation led the police to Bridgewater, Maryland, the two men were arrested on a streetcar armed with weapons similar to those that were used to murder the paymaster and his guard. Although the two men evaded police at the initial scene of the crime, Sacco and Vanzetti could not hide from their crimes forever.
The Sacco-Vanzetti trial drug on as the trial evolved into closely-watched, political event.

The trial pitted a radical defense lawyer against a prosecution that was known to be anti-anarchist. Fred Moore, Sacco and Vanzetti’s attorney, realized that the only hope to win the case was to create a large fanfare around the trial and to turn it into a political event (Linder). Moore appealed to many radical and immigrant communities claiming that there was a political effort made to frame the two men. The trial opened in May of 1921 under heavy guard and drug on until July. Both the prosecution and defense brought forth evidence and witnesses that gave untruthful and sometimes conflicting conclusions. In the end, the jury deliberated at announced that they had found the men guilty. The judge ordered the two men to be executed by the electric chair. However, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti was far from over. Protests began after the conviction across the US, France, Italy, and South America. To avoid the electric chair, Moore and the defense appealed to multiple different courts and sets of evidence for years after the conviction. Similar to the original trial, the evidence presented contradicted itself and showed no clear conclusion. Judge Thayer vowed to ensure that the two men would get what they deserve and refused a retrial (Hodak). The execution had been scheduled for August 23rd, 1927 (Sacco-Vanzetti Case”). The night before the execution, two last-ditch attempts were

rejected by lower state and federal courts. The legal battle was over and the two men would be killed (Linder). The prison was under lockdown and massive preparations were made for the executions. 300 patrolmen were present and machine guns were mounted on the building (Linder). The executions were carried out on August 23, 1927. The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti had a drastic effect on the people of the United States and the world.
The controversial trial divided the nation directly down the middle as people stood either for against the men.

People across the nation and in other countries took to the streets to express their displeasure with the rulings. Riots and protests occurred on six continents as thousands of people received the news. The American Embassy in Paris, France came under fire from protesters, and tanks had to be called in to ease the crowd. Nearly 5000 protesters destroyed anything related to the United States in Geneva and riots in Germany resulted in six deaths (Linder). In an article posted in The Atlantic Monthly, future justice Felix Frankfurter claimed that Judge Thayer and the DA had “exploited the postwar Red Scare and jurors' nativist impulses, thereby invoking a "riot of political passion and patriotic sentiment" that all but precluded a fair trial” (Hodak). Frankfurter’s statement represented the opinion of many people during this time. Most of the world believed that the courts were corrupt and had been biased against Sacco and Vanzetti. Following the protests, the saga of Sacco and Vanzetti came to a close and left the world to wonder the real

truth.
The world was left with uncertainty as they only people who truly knew what had occurred on the day of the hest, Sacco and Vanzetti, were now dead. Several people that participated in the trial, from both the defense and the prosecutions, confessed to paying off witnesses and planting false evidence (Linder). In 1986, investigator Francis Russell examined the evidence of the case and delivered a conclusion for the world. Through letters captured by the prosecution and defense, Russell concluded that Sacco was guilty, but Vanzetti was innocent. However, a different twist was brought to light in 2005. A letter written by Upton Sinclair, author of the famous book The Jungle, revealed the details of his meeting with Fred Moore in 1929. Moore admitted to Sinclair that the defense had created bogus alibis for the two men and that both Sacco and Vanzetti were truly guilty (Linder). The time that passed between the murder and the full truth being revealed, 84 years, represents the complexity of this trial and the long lasting effects that it had.
The Sacco-Vanzetti court case revealed to the world the lives of the two Italians, their accusations of murder, and divided the world over the years following the events. As years pressed on the trial became more and more confusing as evidence contradicted itself. Nevertheless, Sacco and Vanzetti were put to death. This case and its effects will live on forever.