The Agony and the Triumph

Abstract

Prompted by the publication of Francis Russell's Tragedy in Dedham to re-read the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, I was once more struck by their power to move, and even to exalt. I cannot attribute this force to the recollection of personal involvement in the case; I was too young when it started and too uninformed when it ended; yet, later cases of similar miscarriages of justice, particularly that of the Trenton Six, in which I took some part directly, have not affected me as much as the Sacco-Vanzetti case which has become for me the archetypal exemplar of the struggle for individual justice, just as the Spanish Civil War in its time became for me the archetypal exemplar of the struggle for international justice: both are benchmarks for the test of conscience.

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