“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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118: “The Island of Hope and Tears:” Ellis Island
117: Epilogue on Progressive Era Part I (Teddy Roosevelt)
116: Teddy Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy: From Big Stick Diplomacy to the Panama Canal
115: History–Doomed to Repeat It? A Conversation with Lindsay Graham
114: A Square Deal (pt. 3): “Leave it as it is” (Teddy Roosevelt & Conservationism)
113: A Square Deal (pt. 2): Consumer Protection–The FDA, & Ida Tarbell muckrakes Standard Oil
112: A Square Deal (pt. 1): Corp. Regulation—a coal strike, a trust, & Teddy’s Frenemy J.P. Morgan
111: The Assassination of Will McKinley & The Strenuous Life of Theodore Roosevelt
110: Epilogue to the Age of Imperialism
109: The Election of 1900 & the Rise of Anti-Imperialism
108: G.O. 100, “The Water Cure,” & The Law of War in the Early-20th Century with Professor Ryan Vogel
107: The Philippine-American War
106: The US Annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom
105: “A Splendid Little War:” The Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders
104: The Road to the Spanish-American War
103: A Gilded Age Christmas: Joseph Pulitzer’s Christmas Tree Fund
102: Epilogue to the Gilded Age
101: The New South, Jim Crow (Plessy v. Ferguson), & the Death of Frederick Douglass
100: Halloween Special! Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, & The Raven
99: The Gilded Age’s Singer Sewing Machines & Dangerous Bananas w/ Dr. Ben Sawyer of The Road To Now
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