Tragedy in Dedham: The story of the Sacco-Vanzetti case

by Francis Russell

Possibly the best account of famed Labor martyrs ever written, with extensive bibliographical sources. Price clipped, else a fine, unmarked and clean copy in a Brodart jacket cover.

Genres: History, Crime, American History

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Francis Russell was an American author specializing in American history and historical figures.

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francis Russell's Tragedy in Dedham makes a gallant effort to untangle the Sacco-Vanzetti murder trial from decades of mythology and propaganda. Writing in the 1960s (the version I read was a 1971 reprint), twenties historian Russell (The Shadow of Blooming Grove) started out convinced of the two men's innocence but slowly came to qualify his opinion as he sifted through the evidence. Arrested in 1921 for killing two men in a Boston hold-up, Italian-born anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were quickly convicted by a crusading prosecutor and a partial judge; their case likely would have been forgotten if not for a series of appeals that triggered six years of retrials, demonstrations and anguished appeals by liberals, Communists and others who built them into a symbol of capitalist injustice. Certainly the evidence against the two men, presented at trial, was far from ironclad, with contradictory witness statements; false confessions from professional criminals and attention seekers further muddied the water, as did the heated anti-radical atmosphere of the '20s and the two men's own eloquent protests. Russell takes all of this into account, yet finds the physical evidence (particularly ballistics tests of the murder weapons) too damning to overlook; he concludes, as many had before him, that Sacco was certainly guilty, though there's room for doubt about Vanzetti. Like the Alger Hiss and Rosenberg prosecutions of later generations, their innocence became a shibboleth on the Left; with fresh evidence and removed from their original context, it's harder to give them the benefit of the doubt (though some recent historians of the case dissent from Russell's findings). Russell's tale, then, demonstrates how an ordinary criminal trial can transform into a cause celebre, and how two men can remake themselves into martyrs without fully intending to. A fine, if not definitive recounting of an enduring American controversy.

[Daniela Sorgente · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is well written, very detailed but never boring. At the beginning I almost didn't want to read it because the author says that, despite having started with the idea that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, at the end of all his meticulous research and reconstruction work he was convinced that they were guilty. I always knew that in reality they were innocent and that they had had an unfair trial, as declared by Dukakis in 1977 when he also said that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names."
I decided to read the book anyway, trying to keep as open a mind as possible but the author was unable to convince me. Sacco and Vanzetti did not have a fair trial, this is proven: the judge was prejudiced against them and against the Italian witnesses, as was also a large part of public opinion and perhaps even the jury; the difficulties that the two defendants and many Italian witnesses had with the English language were not always addressed in the right way and may have influenced the progress of the trial. Furthermore, at the trial there was a lot of talk about the fact that the two defendants had fled to Mexico years earlier to avoid being drafted during the First World War: the Americans did not forgive them for this, they saw in this gesture the rejection of the country that had them welcomed while for them it was a rejection of the war. Both defendants had an alibi for the day of the robbery, corroborated by multiple people, but these witnesses are said to all be lying. For many people who recognized them as participants in the robbery and the two murders, just as many people said that the people they had seen were not them. The most important piece of evidence, which was declared decisive even many years later, is the bullet that killed one of the two men, which was said to have been fired from the gun that Sacco had with him at the time of the arrest; it is also true, however, that both the gun and the bullets changed hands many times during the trial, in the previous and subsequent years (and it was said once that a policeman had changed Sacco's gun); the first expert who analyzed bullets and gun and who testified at the trial said that the bullet was compatible with the gun; in reality he did not believe that the bullet had been fired from Sacco's gun, but he did not say this at the trial because both the prosecution and the defense were afraid to ask this question.
In short, they were not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, rather there were many doubts and new evidence came out after the trial but the judge did not want to have a second trial.
The book also tells about the suffering of the long years in prison, which ended with the bitter epilogue in the electric chair.

[Jeffrey Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on Project Gutenberg.

Probably the most detailed and extensively researched book on the 1920 Sacco & Vanzetti double-murder and robbery case of Massachusetts. I live in New Hampshire and I tend to gravitate toward books about New England because I know the places and names so well.

Francis Russell, the author, began his book by supporting the idea that the two Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti were not only innocent but were victims of the anti-Socialist, anti-Communist, anti-anarchy attitudes in the USA in the early 20th Century. By the end of the 425+ page book, Russell can't help but to suggest Sacco knew more about this than he let on even though he was sentenced to death.

This book also shows how a little PR can have such a huge influence on the way people think and act. After the double murder, the case was pretty much a local Massachusetts story that hardly warranted any newspaper coverage at the time. But the attorney who represented the two of them in the beginning made it into an international affair and it is still powerful a century later. It is shown in the book that as time went along, Sacco and Vanzetti's support came more from outside the USA than inside.

Decades later in retrospect it is clear that the presiding Judge Thayer was basically a politician and had a pre-determined opinion that these Italians were guilty simply because they were foreigners with anarchist mindsets. The book also shows that Sacco and Vanzetti's original legal counsel missed many opportunities to point out obvious discrepancies. These matters are clearly outlined in detail within the pages of this book.

The research that went into this publication is without compare. The detailed trial transcripts, writings from the key players, and the author's own interviews with the surviving players transcend time and almost makes the reader feel like you are living in the 1920's and watching it all play out.

Had this crime happened in the 21st Century, there might have been a different outcome. This book is a must-read for history buffs, especially those who have an interest in the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of socialism around the world.

[Christopher Daley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most essential book on the Sacco-Vanzetti Case!