This article explores the effects of the 1886 Haymarket violence and executions on Chicago's other “radical” group: Irish nationalists. Although Chicago's Irish nationalists were mainly concerned with freedom for Ireland and not radical social change in the United States, their support for violent and immediate action, and especially their use of dynamite, caused many Americans to see them in the same light as other “European radicals.” Therefore, when the execution of the Haymarket martyrs demonstrated the state's intolerance for radical discourse, Chicago's Irish nationalists took pains to separate their cause from anarchism. Their reputation as an organization of violent foreigners was hard to overcome because of the lingering effects of nativism caused by the Haymarket incident.
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