Which Haymarket defendant was a former Confederate soldier?

The Haymarket defendant who had been a former Confederate soldier was Albert Parsons.

Parsons was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1848 and moved to Texas after being orphaned. At 13, during the American Civil War, he served first with an irregular Confederate unit known as the Lone Star Greys. He later joined the 12th Texas Cavalry and saw action in several campaigns.

His later political life sharply diverged from that Confederate past. After the war, Parsons supported Reconstruction and the civil and political rights of formerly enslaved people. He became a Republican official in Texas before moving to Chicago with his wife, Lucy Parsons, in 1873.

In Chicago, Parsons became a printer, labor activist, newspaper editor, and anarchist speaker. He edited The Alarm and addressed the Haymarket rally on May 4, 1886, though he had initially hesitated to attend. Convicted with seven other defendants despite no proof that he threw the bomb, Parsons was hanged alongside August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel on November 11, 1887.