It was an odd place, historically speaking, for Rick Santorum to make this particular speech. If his campaign did not know the history of it, they are incompetent. If they did know and chose Herrin, Illinois, anyway they should explain.
Herrin was the site of a brutal massacre of strikebreakers in 1922, an event in which 23 men died and which President Harding called a "shocking crime" that "shamed and horrified the country."
Santorum, who has grown fond of presenting his candidacy as one of historic necessity, cites the Constitution and the Civil War as comparable moments of urgency. Yesterday without mentioning Herrin’s bloody history he issued there a ringing call to action.
Exhorting his crowd to remember the Constitution writers’ pledge of “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” he told his audience that “your honor is on the line.” The torch of freedom the patriots passed down could go out, he warned, “if we are not successful in this election...if you walk out of here and not just vote for me, but you actually do the duty of freedom: actually work hard, call your friends, post this up on Facebook, tweet about it, write about it....”
Herrin and Williamson County are not like the rest of Illinois. Paul Angle, in his 1992 book Bloody Williamson, wrote that in this county murder "was no novelty" but an indigenous condition. Historically, dating to before the Civil War, it was a place of blood vendettas, vigilante lawlessness, quick tempers, sudden violence, racist lynching, Klan rule, massacres, kangaroo courts, and corrupt government.
Here is an account of the massacre, excerpted from my unpublished memoir Murder He Wrote:
On the morning of June 22, 1922, just outside of Herrin an army of 500 striking miners and their sympathizers surrounded the Southern Illinois Coal Company compound on the edge of a new strip mine whose owner had broken a strike agreement.
All night there was shooting as company guards and strikebreakers took cover behind railroad ties and empty coal cars. Two union miners and one of the guards died, and explosions destroyed the mine's water supply. At dawn the besieged strikebreakers sent out a guard with a cook's apron tied to a broomstick offering surrender if they would be allowed to leave safely. A voice replied, "Come on out and we'll get you out of the county." As they were marched down the road toward Herrin's rail station the pro-union mob grew angrier and began shooting prisoners one at a time, starting with the mine superintendent. Someone who arrived in a car at that moment, later identified as a union officer named Hugh Willis, told the mob leaders not to shoot prisoners on the road but to take them into the woods and "kill all you can."
When the mass of prisoners approached a barbed wire fence and tried to climb over one got hung up, someone fired a pistol unleashing a wild volley of more gunfire. In the resulting slaughter nineteen men died. Some were hanged from trees. Some were pursued and executed. Wounded men crying for mercy or water were kicked and shot in the head. Several had their throats cut. Others were urinated upon as they lay dying. A Chicago newspaperman who tried to give water to one victim was threatened with a cocked rifle and a warning: "Keep away, God damn you!"
The horror of the Herrin Massacre galvanized the nation. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called it "the most brutal and horrifying crime that has ever stained the garments of organized labor." In the U.S. Senate it was compared with German atrocities in the recent war. President Harding called it a "shocking crime" that "shamed and horrified the country" and asked for legislation to allow punishment of such "barbarity" in federal instead of state courts.
Thirteen men were indicted and divided into two groups for trial. Eight of them in the Williamson County jail were given fans against the heat, a Victrola and phonograph records for entertainment, and home-cooked dinners. After all thirteen of them were found not guilty in spite of positive identification of the killers, State's Attorney Delos Duty announced he would pursue it no further.
"I tried to convince two juries . . .," he said. "I'm not complaining, but it's a hopeless proposition."
To paraphrase another Rick: Of all the towns, in all the counties, in all the states to make that speech, Santorum chose Herrin, Illinois.
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