'Not to Us Chained'. Nature and the Radicalism of Sacco and Vanzetti (original) (raw)

2023, The Massachusetts Historical Review

Midway through his time in prison, between a questionable arrest for armed robbery and murder in 1920 and a horrific execution by electric chair in 1927, Italian immigrant and revolutionary anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti explained his concept of freedom in a letter to wealthy Boston social reformer Elizabeth Glendower Evans. "Freedom," he wrote, is "for each and all things of the universe, to follows their natural tendenciesand to fulfill their own virtues, qualities and capacities." Then, in the next few lines, Vanzetti waxed lyrical, employing language reminiscent of the literary Romantic movement to bemoan what was happening to him and his comrade Nicola Sacco. "Oh the blessing green of the wilderness and of the open land-O the blue vastness of the oceans-the fragrances of the flowers and the sweetness of the fruits," he declared, "O the mistic dawn-the roses of the aurora, the glory of the moon-O the sunset-the twilight-O the supreme extasies and mystery of the starry night, heavenly creature of the eternity." This was not mere flight of imagination, he insisted, "all this is real actuality, but not to us, not to us chained-and just as simply because we, being chained, have not the freedom to use our natural faculty of locomotion to carry us from our cells to the open horizon-under the sun at daytime-under the visible stars at night." 1 Although it might seem surprising that someone like Vanzetti would be inclined toward dreamy musing about nature's beauty and sublime