The evening of May 19, 1901, about two weeks after he first heard Emma Goldman, Leon Czolgosz approached a modest home near a stand of thick woods about twelve miles outside Cleveland. Dressed in casual clothes, he had come to see Emil Schilling, a German radical well known in Ohio. Middle-aged with wide-set, small eyes, Schilling was an unsettling figure. People who met him noticed a tendency to fix his gaze for several moments “with great concentration.” His expression could then change quickly, his face able to contort into an “ugly, almost malignant look” that gave him the appearance of a “dangerous looking person.”1
Czolgosz introduced himself under his alias Fred Nieman as a friend of a fellow radical by the name of Howser.2 He was, Czolgosz explained, interested in anarchism and wanted to learn more. Schilling was intrigued by the earnest young man and asked him about himself. Czolgosz described how he had been a member of Sila and other socialist groups but had grown weary of the constant infighting. Impressed, Schilling invited him to join the family for dinner. Czolgosz accepted but remained a quiet guest. “I thought he was all right this time when he called on me,” Schilling said later. The two parted warmly, Czolgosz carrying with him a book Schilling provided about Albert Parsons and the Chicago anarchists.
By this time, Czolgosz had reached a sort of emotional and intellectual tipping point. Life on the farm, among his family, had become an unbearable grind. Yet he was trapped there, having contributed most of his savings—and he had earned nothing since—to the purchase and operation of the farm. Although he was hardly the most popular person around the house, none of his brothers or sisters, nor his father, wanted to refund his investment. Throughout the spring and into summer, Czolgosz’s demands for his money became increasingly bitter.
Again, too, he seemed preoccupied with his health. Once, while standing on a street near a dying tree, his brother Waldek pressed him on why he wanted to leave. “Look,” Leon said, “it is just the same as that tree that commences dying—you can see it isn’t going to live long.”3 He would go west, he said, where the warmer climate would be good for him. He would search for employment that would not have appealed to someone who was truly sick—working as a conductor, binding wheat, or fixing machines. More likely was that Czolgosz felt that his spirit was being crushed on the farm. Tortured by his stepmother, intellectually starved, he craved the company of radicals. Waldek, who never could figure out what was driving his brother, once pressed him. Czolgosz simply answered, “I can’t stand it any longer.”4
In the meantime, Czolgosz continued to nurture his growing fascination with anarchist thought. One more time he turned up on the doorstep of Emil Schilling, on this occasion his interest more pointed than his earlier visit. The idea of joining the underground world of violent, dangerous radicals had captured his imagination, though probably more for the romance of it than anything else.5 In quick and clumsy ways, Czolgosz asked questions about whether any subterfuge was then being considered by anarchists: “Say, have you any secret societies?” Czolgosz asked. “I hear the anarchists are plotting something like Bresci; the man was selected by the comrades to do the deed that was done.”
Schilling disabused Czolgosz of any thought of joining a plot. “Well,” Schilling said. “You did not read it in any anarchist newspaper.”
Schilling now developed quite a different opinion of the man who called himself Nieman. “I think that Nieman wanted to be smart enough to find out something as a secret detective and I think he was not smart enough to do what he wanted. I think he was very ignorant.” Schilling later said that Czolgosz appeared strange to him. “When I answered him he was always laughing at my answers as if he either felt superior or had formed a plan and was putting out a feeler.” The relationship soured further when Czolgosz returned Schilling’s book from the first visit, but said he hadn’t had time to read it. “This made me mad and I was suspicious of him,” Schilling said.
After dinner, the two went for a walk, during which Czolgosz’s social ineptness was plainly evident. He repeatedly declined an invitation to have a beer, offering instead a cigar, which Schilling refused. Finally, the exasperated Schilling convinced him to stop for a drink, but even then Czolgosz would order nothing more powerful than a soda. So odd was his behavior that Schilling decided to look up Howser and ask him about the young man who used his name as a reference. Howser confirmed Czolgosz was a good and active member of the Polish Socialist Society of the Labor Party, but that his name wasn’t Nieman; it was something else, though he couldn’t remember exactly what.
A week later, Nieman returned to see Schilling yet again, this time dressed in his Sunday clothes. He now poured out his heart, saying that he was tired of life and that he was abused by his stepmother. His father, he said, was too dominated by the woman to protect him. Still, he looked good. His clothes were neat and clean. “He had a red complexion, was healthy looking,” Schilling said.
Czolgosz also asked Schilling for a letter of introduction that would enable him to meet Emma Goldman. The speech he had heard in May had left a mark on him, he said, and he was anxious to tell her so. The suspicious Schilling refused to give a written letter but advised Czolgosz to catch up with Goldman when she was in Chicago. “I go to Chicago,” Czolgosz announced.6
He was also around this time finally able to leave the farm for good. On July 11, 1901, sick of his complaining and idling, the family scraped seventy dollars together and told Czolgosz that he could leave.7 So delighted was Czolgosz by the news that he left without saying when he would be back, nor even saying good-bye to his father.8 In typical Czolgosz fashion, he offered several different versions of his intentions. He told a sister-in-law that he was going to Kansas. To his sister, Victoria, he said he was going to California for his health. After three days he wrote home a brief note from Fort Wayne, Indiana, explaining that he was heading west.9
On the afternoon of July 12, 1901, Goldman was just finishing up a small luncheon thrown on her behalf at the Chicago home of Abraham Isaak, the publisher of Free Society. Exhausted from her speaking engagements and the hot summer, Goldman had spent several weeks with the family, at one point taking their teenage daughter Mary on a short holiday. This afternoon she was to leave.
After saying good-bye to the last of her friends, Goldman went upstairs to finish packing when the doorbell rang. Mary answered and found on the porch a well-dressed young man who explained he urgently needed to see Goldman. The name he gave was Nieman. Running late for her train, Goldman shouted down to have the gentleman wait. Whoever it was, whatever he wanted, she could talk with him on the way to the station.
Descending the stairs a few minutes later, Goldman quickly recognized Nieman as the “handsome chap of the golden hair” who had spoken with her in Cleveland. Together the two chatted as they walked to the elevated train and boarded, carrying on their conversation while tightly gripping the straps as the train jerked and twisted through Chicago. Nieman told Goldman that he belonged to a socialist club in Cleveland but that he had grown frustrated because the members were unenthusiastic and lacked vision. He had now decided to leave Cleveland and was eager to make contact with anarchists in Chicago. The two continued to talk as they made their way to the Lake Shore station where they met a small knot of Goldman’s anarchist friends.10
Goldman introduced Czolgosz to the others and asked them to look after him. He had apparently failed to ingratiate himself with her during their ride together. While Czolgosz spoke with Hippolyte Havel, a Czech radical, Goldman whispered to Isaak that the gentleman had “been following her around” and she didn’t have time to devote to him. She asked Isaak to find out what Czolgosz wanted.11
As Goldman’s train pulled away from the platform, Czolgosz tried clumsily to fit in with the men—just the sort he had been hoping to meet. He referred to Isaak as “comrade” and bluntly asked if there were any “secret meetings” that he might attend.12 Again, he rehashed his background, explaining he had been a socialist for seven years but had grown weary of the constant quarreling. Curiously, according to Isaak’s account, Czolgosz claimed he was not an anarchist and that he knew nothing of the ideology other than what he had heard Goldman describe in the one address he had attended.13 Czolgosz handled himself in such a ham-fisted manner and, apparently, was so ill informed that Isaak began to wonder if he might be some sort of police spy. Indeed, two other “comrades” among the group on the platform were so suspicious of Czolgosz that they wanted to offer him overnight lodging just so they could rifle through his pockets while he slept for proof that he was a government agent.14
Still, as he studied Nieman’s face, Isaak “could not help thinking that his eyes and words expressed sincerity.” Arriving back at Isaak’s house, the two chatted on his front porch and Czolgosz explained that he was tired of socialism and now sought something “more active.” The McKinley administration, Czolgosz said, had disillusioned him. In particular, the “outrages committed by the American government in the Philippine Islands” seemed to trouble him. “It does not harmonize with the teachings in our public schools about our flag,” Czolgosz said.15
Despite concerns about Czolgosz’s intentions, Isaak was willing to give the strange young man the benefit of the doubt. He would not give Czolgosz money but took him to a rooming house owned by Esther Wolfson on Carroll Avenue and rented accommodations for him. It was the last Isaak saw of the mysterious young man. Sometime that night, Czolgosz slipped out without Wolfson knowing.16
At home on the edge of the forest outside Cleveland in August, Schilling received a letter from Isaak. He wrote that he had met a curious man a few days earlier who used the name of Nieman and was throwing Schilling’s name around town. As his eyes made their way down the page, a knock came at the door. It was Czolgosz.
Schilling quickly folded the letter and put it in his pocket. The coincidence was too much to ignore and he suspected that his curious visitor may have intercepted the letter and read it.17 Still, Schilling invited Czolgosz to have a seat and asked what he had been up to for the past two months. Czolgosz described working in a cheese factory in Akron, though as was his manner, he laughed when he said it. Things were getting worse and worse, Czolgosz said. “They were getting more brutal against the strikers and … something must be done.”18
Schilling then invited his visitor to join him and a neighbor on a walk. Where was Czolgosz going next, Schilling asked as they strode in the summer warmth. “May-be Detroit, may-be Buffalo,” Czolgosz answered, but added very little.19 Like many who had spent time with Czolgosz, Schilling was puzzled. The evasiveness, the persistent questions, the social awkwardness. It all left the big German feeling wary. Anarchists were always on the lookout for government agents who they believed periodically attempted to penetrate anarchist circles, and maybe this was how they behaved.
Not long thereafter, Schilling wrote Isaak, suggesting that he publish a warning about Czolgosz in Free Society. On September 1, 1901, this notice appeared:
ATTENTION! The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well dressed, of medium height; rather narrow shouldered, blond and about 25 years of age. Up to the present he has made his appearance in Chicago and Cleveland. In the former place he remained a short time, while in Cleveland he disappeared when the comrades had confirmed themselves of his identity and were on the point of exposing him. His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names, or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this individual makes his appearance elsewhere, the comrades are warned in advance and can act accordingly.
After summering with the Isaaks, Goldman made her way to Rochester where she was extending her vacation. There, as she often did, she purchased a copy of Free Society. As she flipped through the publication’s few pages, she was astonished to find the warning about the man whom she had just encountered in Chicago.
Goldman hadn’t been able to spend much time with him and found the man slightly annoying, but displaying deeper levels of perception than her colleagues in Chicago and Cleveland, she saw nothing in Czolgosz that suggested he was a spy. “I was very angry,” she wrote later. “To make such a charge, on such flimsy grounds!” Her blood up, she penned a letter to Isaak asking for proof of his accusations. And when he hesitated, she fired off a second missive that finally prompted the publisher to publicly apologize for his accusation.20 “It must have hurt him to the quick to be so cruelly misjudged by the very people to whom he had come for inspiration,” she later wrote. “It was apparent that he had sought in anarchism a solution to the wrongs he saw everywhere about him. No doubt it was that which had induced him to call on me and later on the Isaaks. Instead of finding help, the poor youth saw himself attacked.”21