“I want to say make no settlement until they sign up that every bloody murderer of a guard has got to go.”
This is the story of the largest uprising in the United States since the Civil War.
As unions spread across the Progressive-Era United States, West Virginia mine owners manage to keep them out. They have some good reasons (tough margins) and some less savory ones … like their preference for an oppressive “mine guard system” in “company towns” that effectively removes civil government and private ownership, and reduces the American citizens working in their mines to serfdom. Mother Jones inspires the miners to push back.
Over the course of a decade, that pushback turns bloody – especially in Mingo County. But the worst of it comes just after the Great War, as the miner’s hero, Police Chief Sid “Two Gun” Hatfield, is murdered in cold blood at McDowell County Courthouse. Now, all bets are off. 10,000 miners grab their guns, ready to get revenge and free incarcerated miners. But they’ll have to go through Sheriff Don Chafin’s forces first. The two sides clash at Blair Mountain as the US Army arrives with regiments and aviation squadrons.
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138: The 15th New York/369th or The Harlem Hellfighters
137: The First Battle of the First American Army: St. Mihiel
136: The German Spring Offensive’s End, or The Second Battle of the Marne
135: Belleau Wood – A Cut Deeper with Captain Mac Caldwell
134: (Most of) The German Spring Offensive of 1918 & The Fight for Belleau Wood
133: Heading “Over There:” “Black Jack” Pershing & Creating WWI’s American Expeditionary Force
132: The US Enters WWI (RMS Lusitania, Black Tom Island, & The Zimmermann Telegram)
131: Epilogue on World War 1 before the US
130: Russia: From the Great War to Revolution with Deputy Provost Kat Brown
129: World War I Before the US (Military Tech, Trenches, Global Armies, Ypres, Verdun & the Somme)
128: The Causes of World War I (From the Congress of Vienna to Franz Ferdinand & the Marne)
127: Mr. Wilson Goes to Washington (Progressive Policies & Foreign Affairs in South America)
126: Christmas Special 6: Jacob Riis’ “Is There a Santa Claus?”
125: Epilogue: The Progressive Era
124: The “Bull Moose” Election of 1912
123: The Wright Brothers Fly at Kitty Hawk
122: Halloween Special II: H.P. Lovecraft – “The Outsider” & “Dagon”
121: Henry Ford: The Model T & Mass Production
120: From Atlanta to the NAACP, or Booker T. Washington v. W.E.B. Du Bois
119: Women’s Suffrage & the Passage of the 19th Amendment
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