Bartolomeo Vanzetti's Last Statement (21 August 1927)

BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI'S LAST STATEMENT (21 August 1927)

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Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) and Nicola Sacco (1881–1927) were Italian immigrants and anarchists sentenced to death for a payroll holdup and murder in Massachusetts in 1920. Legal scholars generally consider the case a miscarriage of justice: the defense was inept, the prosecution was openly prejudicial, the judge repeatedly attacked and profaned the defendants outside the courtroom, evidence was fabricated, and witnesses were perjured, among other things. Though Sacco and Vanzetti eventually received support from an increasingly international group of liberal activists, labor organizers, and concerned citizens, the prevailing spirit of the times condemned them as dangerous communists and they were executed on August 23, 1927.

Vanzetti's letter to his compatriot's son, Dante, is the last in a series of letters written by the two men during their seven years in prison. In the letter, Vanzetti stresses that the men were not criminals but principled lovers of liberty. He decries the corrupt prejudices behind his conviction and urges Dante to follow in his father's struggle against the "exploitation and oppression of the man by the man."

Leah R. Shafer,
Cornell University

See also Anarchists ; Sacco-Vanzetti Case .

My Dear Dante:

I still hope, and we will fight until the last moment, to revindicate our right to live and to be free, but all the forces of the State and of the money and reaction are deadly against us because we are libertarians or anarchists.

I write little of this because you are now and yet too young to understand these things and other things of which I would like to reason with you.

But, if you do well, you will grow and understand your father's and my case and your father's and my principles, for which we will soon be put to death.

I tell you now that all that I know of your father, he is not a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew. Some day you will understand what I am about to tell you. That your father has sacrificed everything dear and sacred to the human heart and soul for his fate in liberty and justice for all. That day you will be proud of your father, and if you come brave enough, you will take his place in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and you will vindicate his (our) names and our blood.

If we have to die now, you shall know, when you will be able to understand this tragedy in its fullest, how good and brave your father has been with you, your father and I, during these eight years of struggle, sorrow, passion, anguish and agony.

Even from now you shall be good, brave with your mother, with Ines, and with Susie—brave, good Susie—and do all you can to console and help them.

I would like you to also remember me as a comrade and friend to your father, your mother and Ines, Susie and you, and I assure you that neither have I been a criminal, that I have committed no robbery and no murder, but only fought modestily to abolish crimes from among mankind and for the liberty of all.

Remember Dante, each one who will say otherwise of your father and I, is a liar, insulting innocent dead men who have been brave in their life. Remember and know also, Dante, that if your father and I would have been cowards and hypocrits and rinnegetors of our faith, we would not have been put to death. They would not even have convicted a lebbrous dog; not even executed a deadly poisoned scorpion on such evidence as that they framed against us. They would have given a new trial to a matricide and habitual felon on the evidence we presented for a new trial.

Remember, Dante, remember always these things; we are not criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new trial; and if we will be executed after seven years, four months and seventeen days of unspeakable tortures and wrong, it is for what I have already told you; because we were for the poor and against the exploitation and oppression of the man by the man.

The documents of our case, which you and other ones will collect and preserve, will prove to you that your father, your mother, Ines, my family and I have sacrificed by and to a State Reason of the American Plutocratic reaction.

The day will come when you will understand the atrocious cause of the above written words, in all its fullness. Then you will honor us.

Now Dante, be brave and good always. I embrace you.

P. S. I left the copy of An American Bible to your mother now, for she will like to read it, and she will give it to you when you will be bigger and able to understand it. Keep it for remembrance. It will also testify to you how good and generous Mrs. Gertrude Winslow has been with us all. Good-bye Dante.

Bartolomeo

SOURCE: Frankfurter, Marion Denman, and Gardner Jackson, eds. The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York: Octagon Books, 1971.