This is the eighth excerpt from Labor's Untold Story printed here by permission of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The book can be purchased for $6.95, plus $2 postage for single orders from the UE by writing to their headquarters at 2400 Oliver Building, 535 Smithfield Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222.

Ten men were hanged on June 21, 1877, six at Pottsville and four at Mauch Chunk. Vast crowds of silent miners surrounded the two jail yards, in each of which a scaffold had been erected. State militia, their bayonets glinting wanly in misty sunlight, surrounded each jail, and others were deployed around the scaffolds. The miners, and their wives and children, began arriving at four in the morning for executions scheduled at eleven o'clock, some coming from as far as twenty miles away and walking through the night.

By nine the crowd in Pottsville stretched as far as one could see, standing silent through the long moments and dragging morning hours, and witnesses said that the silence was the people's way of paying tribute to those about to die. Only once was it broken and that was when an old woman began to weep and curse.

Inside the jail at Pottsville, the New York Tribune declared, "the scene was a trying one." The six condemned men were saying farewell to their wives, mothers, and children. Father McDermott, who had attended Carroll and Duffy, was telling reporters, "I know beyond all reasonable doubt that Duffy was not a partner to the murder of Policeman Yost. The same would apply with almost equal force to Carroll."

The aged and impoverished father of Munley, who had walked all the way from Gilbertson, a distance of thirteen miles, was telling his son that he knew he was innocent but the distracted Munley, soon to die with an air reporters described as "nonchalant and easy," was inquiring for his wife. She was outside, weeping hysterically and shaking the locked prison gates, demanding admission. It was refused. She had arrived after six, it was said, the last moment for the admission of relatives. She tried to explain that she had had to arrange things at home and that that had made her late, but a prison official shook his head and walked away. For a moment she seemed to go mad with grief, shrieking and flinging herself against the gate until she collapsed, crumpling to the ground outside the prison wall.

Inside her husband had regained his composure and the chaplain later recalled that he "had been a fine looking man and that he showed no fear." All six were handsome and young. They were freshly shaved, dressed in their best, and a prison guard told reporters, "They looked like they were going to a wedding."

Each had in his lapel a red rose. "At 10:55 o'clock, a creaking of the iron gates at the opposite end of the yard," said the Tribune, "caused all eyes to be turned there. Two minutes later two of the condemned men were brought out, McGeehan and Doyle. Their demeanor was one of entire self-possession. The degree of nerve of both men ... was extraordinary." As they mounted the scaffold together they joined hands and a moment before the trap was sprung Doyle said to McGeehan, "Hughie, let's die like men."

And so they all died. Thomas Munley, James Carroll, James Roarity, Hugh McGeehan, James Boyle, Thomas Duffy, Michael J. Doyle, Edward J. Kelly, Alexander Campbell, John Donahue, Thomas P. Fisher, John Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter McManus, and Andrew Lanahan.

The last two of the nineteen miners, Charles Sharpe and James McDonald, were hanged on Jan. 14, 1879, at Mauch Chunk. The condemned men knew that it was probable that they had been pardoned by the governor and that it was likely that a messenger with a reprieve was on the way.

But there was no delay in the executions. They were held on the precise minute scheduled but the condemned men neither begged or flinched. It was then that the New York World reporter wrote, "The demeanor of the men on the scaffold, their resolute and yet quiet protestations of innocence ... were things to stagger one's belief in their guilt ... They were arrested and arraigned at a time of great public excitement, and they were condemned and hanged on 'general principles.'" And he concluded his report by telling how a few minutes after the dead men had been cut from the dangling nooses, the governor's reprieve had arrived granting them life.