Ten thousand armed coal miners held Blair Mountain in late August 1921. They confronted machine gun nests, personal planes dropping bombs, and a rising drive of deputies backed by coal firm cash. Then President Warren Harding decided that will finish the most important armed rebel for the reason that Civil Battle.
He despatched within the U.S. Army.
The Battle of Blair Mountain as it’s now identified, grew to become essentially the most notorious occasion of the West Virginia Coal Wars. In response, the federal authorities deployed troops, bombers, and navy drive to suppress American staff preventing for union rights. The intervention set a precedent that will form how the navy dealt with home unrest for many years.
A System Constructed on Management
West Virginia’s coal miners lived underneath what historians name an industrial police state. They labored in company-owned mines, lived in company-owned homes, and shopped at company-owned shops. Wages got here as scrip, firm foreign money nugatory wherever else. Miners rented instruments from the corporate, purchased overpriced items from firm shops, and fell deeper into debt with every paycheck.
Demise charges in West Virginia mines had been the best within the nation. In 1918 alone, 404 miners died within the state. Gasoline explosions, roof collapses, and mechanical accidents killed 1000’s over time. Security laws barely existed. Coal operators prioritized manufacturing over lives.
When miners tried to arrange unions, corporations deployed the Baldwin-Felts Detective Company. These personal brokers functioned as employed muscle. They beat organizers, evicted households at gunpoint, and even killed union sympathizers. Mine guards patrolled cities on horseback carrying shotguns, rifles, and golf equipment. Free speech did not exist. Miners could not collect in teams bigger than two. Firm postmasters learn and censored their mail.
Making circumstances worse, the coal operators managed native sheriffs, judges, and politicians. The system was designed to crush any resistance earlier than it began.
The Capturing in Matewan
On Might 19, 1920, Baldwin-Felts brokers arrived by prepare in Matewan, a small mining city in Mingo County. They got here to evict miners from firm housing for making an attempt to unionize. Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield and Mayor Cabell Testerman confronted them, demanding to see warrants.
The brokers could not produce authorized documentation. Hatfield deputized a number of miners on the spot to cease the evictions. Tensions exploded right into a gunfight alongside the railroad tracks. When the capturing stopped, 10 folks lay useless together with the mayor, seven Baldwin-Felts brokers, and two miners.
Hatfield grew to become an instantaneous hero throughout West Virginia’s coalfields. He had stood as much as the coal corporations. Miners noticed hope that resistance was doable.
The businesses noticed a menace that wanted to be eradicated.
Violence escalated all through 1920 and into 1921. State police raided miner tent colonies, destroying shelters and arresting union members. Governor Ephraim Morgan declared martial regulation in Mingo County on the coal operators’ request. A whole bunch of union activists had been jailed with out trial. Households had been assaulted in makeshift camps.
By the summer season of 1921, West Virginia was a powder keg.
The Battle
On August 1, 1921, Hatfield walked up the steps of the McDowell County courthouse along with his buddy Ed Chambers. Each males had been unarmed. Their wives accompanied them. Baldwin-Felts brokers opened hearth from the highest of the steps. Hatfield died immediately. An agent ran down and shot Chambers once more at the back of the top whereas his spouse screamed.
Not one of the assassins confronted expenses.
Phrase unfold via the mining camps like wildfire. Inside days, miners started gathering at Lens Creek. By August 24, roughly 13,000 armed males began marching south towards Mingo County. Many had been World Battle I veterans. They knew how you can combat.
“It’s time to lay down the bible and take up the rifle,” declared John Wilburn, a Baptist minister and part-time miner who would lead troops up Blair Mountain.
The miners wore purple bandanas round their necks to establish one another within the dense forests. The press known as them the “Pink Neck Army.” They commandeered trains, together with one they renamed the “Blue Metal Particular.” Their purpose was to free imprisoned union miners in Mingo County, finish martial regulation, and drive the coal operators to acknowledge their rights.
One impediment stood of their means. Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin had assembled a non-public military of three,000 males alongside Blair Mountain’s ridgeline. The Logan County Coal Operators Affiliation paid for the whole lot, creating the nation’s largest personal armed drive.
“No armed mob will cross the Logan County line,” Chafin proclaimed.
President Harding Intervenes
On August 25, Secretary of Battle John Weeks despatched Brigadier Normal Henry Bandholtz to West Virginia with presidential approval. Harding selected rigorously. Bandholtz had earned his repute suppressing resistance to American occupation within the Philippines. He later served as Provost Marshal for the American Expeditionary Pressure in France throughout World Battle I. The 56-year-old normal knew how you can put down rebellions.
Bandholtz carried express orders to find out whether or not federal troops had been essential or if the menace alone would suffice. He was to revive order directly, ideally with out bloodshed.
He met with Governor Ephraim Morgan first. Morgan claimed the southern counties had been on the mercy of a military of rabble. Solely navy intervention would stop huge lack of life and property destruction.
Then Bandholtz met with union leaders Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney on August 26. He made his place crystal clear. He wasn’t thinking about labor disputes or mining circumstances. He instructed them he was “detached to the deserves of the dispute between miners and coal operators” however cared solely concerning the president’s directive to revive regulation and order.
If the miners did not disperse, Bandholtz warned, the U.S. Army would “snuff them out” or arrest them for treason.
Keeney relayed the warning to miners gathered at a baseball discipline in Madison.
“You possibly can combat the federal government of West Virginia, however, by God, you may’t combat the federal government of the US,” he instructed them.
The miners initially agreed to show again. Then stories arrived that Chafin’s forces had attacked union sympathizers in Sharples, killing miners and endangering households. The march resumed with renewed fury.
Bandholtz reported again to Washington with the information that federal intervention was essential.
4 Days of Fight
Combating erupted on August 31 when Wilburn led 70 miners up Blair Mountain earlier than daybreak. They encountered three deputy sheriffs, together with John Gore, a infamous mine guard. Gunfire broke out. Gore fell useless with a bullet in his head. One miner, Eli Kemp, additionally died within the skirmish.
Quickly, gunfights broke out all alongside the mountain.
The battle raged for 4 days throughout a 15-mile ridgeline. Chafin’s forces held superior positions and higher weapons. Non-public planes dropped home made bombs full of gunpowder, nuts, and bolts. In addition they allegedly dropped poison gasoline and explosives left over from World Battle I.
An estimated a million rounds had been fired over that quick time interval. The miners pushed ahead repeatedly, at instances coming inside 4 miles of Logan. Army strategists would later be aware that the miners, many skilled in WWI ways, had practically damaged via Chafin’s defenses.
However they would not get the prospect.
The Largest Home Army Deployment in A long time
On August 30, President Harding issued a proclamation commanding all individuals engaged within the rebel to disperse. He threatened navy drive. Two days later, he ordered the deployment.
The response was huge. Harding mobilized 2,500 Army troops underneath Bandholtz’s command, the most important home navy deployment in over 40 years. He despatched Army Air Service reconnaissance planes to patrol the skies and collect intelligence. Most dramatically, he dispatched Martin MB-1 bombers from Maryland underneath Normal Billy Mitchell, the identical aviation pioneer who would later advocate for expanded air energy.
The bombers by no means dropped ordnance on the miners. Their mission was surveillance and intimidation. One Martin bomber crashed on its return flight, killing 4 of the 5 crew members.
By September 3, federal troops poured into West Virginia. They established positions at Blair Mountain, Jeffrey, Sharples, and Logan. Troopers constructed posts alongside the ridgelines. Bombers circled overhead. The navy occupation was swift and overwhelming.
Governor Morgan issued a proclamation ordering peace officers to cooperate with U.S. troops “to the top that there could also be unity of motion.” State and federal authority now stood united towards the miners.
Veterans Face Veterans
The miners confronted an unimaginable predicament. Many had fought for his or her nation in France simply three years earlier. Now Army troops, their fellow veterans, stood between them and their objectives. The miners had been unwilling to combat the U.S. Army.
They laid down their weapons.
Some scattered preventing continued till September 4, however the riot was over. Roughly 1,000 exhausted miners surrendered on to Army troops. The remainder hid their rifles within the woods and returned house, hoping to keep away from arrest.
Bandholtz refused Governor Morgan’s request to make use of the Army forces to assist civil authorities arrest the remainder of the miners. His job was restoring order, not prosecuting staff. However he did set up censorship over information stories, eradicating descriptions of poverty circumstances in mining cities. When journalist Boyden Sparkes tried to publish sympathetic protection after being shot twice by state militia, Army censors instructed him, “No sob stuff for these purple necks.”
By the top of the Battle of Blair Mountain,16 folks had been useless, together with 12 miners and 4 of Chafin’s males. A whole bunch extra had been wounded. The true dying toll might have been a lot larger. Miners hid their casualties to keep away from revealing losses to the enemy. Some our bodies had been probably buried in secret on the mountain.
The Aftermath
West Virginia authorities indicted 985 miners on expenses starting from homicide to treason towards the state. Union chief Invoice Blizzard confronted treason expenses in three separate trials in Charles City, Lewisburg, and Fayetteville earlier than prosecutors lastly gave up. Most miners had been finally acquitted by sympathetic juries, although some served as much as 4 years in jail.
Chafin, the sheriff who sparked a lot of the violence, was arrested a number of years afterward corruption expenses. He served time in federal jail for bootlegging, confirming what miners had claimed all alongside about Logan County’s corruption.
At a later trial, a number of the coal miners supplied an unexploded bomb from the battle to argue that state authorities deployed extreme drive towards them.
The Battle of Blair Mountain established concrete precedents for navy intervention in home labor disputes. When the Bonus Army of World Battle I veterans marched on Washington in 1932 demanding cost for the fight service, President Hoover deployed Army troops underneath Douglas MacArthur to drive them out. The navy response mirrored Bandholtz’s actions in West Virginia, utilizing overwhelming drive, swift motion, and no negotiation towards American civilians, together with veterans.
It was the primary use of navy plane for home surveillance and intimidation. The Army going ahead felt that overhead planes might compel rioters or rebels to disperse with out pictures being fired.
The intervention crushed the United Mine Employees in West Virginia. Membership collapsed throughout Appalachia. Coal operators tightened their grip on mining cities, and security circumstances deteriorated. Demise charges in West Virginia mines throughout the Nineteen Twenties reached over 400 miners per 12 months, the best in state historical past.
Union organizing would not recuperate in West Virginia’s coalfields till Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal within the Nineteen Thirties. The Nationwide Labor Relations Act of 1935 lastly gave staff authorized protections that the miners at Blair Mountain had fought for at gunpoint.
The most important armed rebel on American soil for the reason that Civil Battle led to favor of the coal bosses, after 16 folks had been killed. The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of many largest home uprisings and civil conflicts in American historical past, put down by the overwhelming deployment of federal troops to West Virginia.
