“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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60: Gettysburg
59: Stone’s River, Suspending Habeas Corpus, Vicksburg, & Stonewall’s Death at Chancellorsville
58: Conscription & Riots (“A Rich Man’s War, But a Poor Man’s Fight”)
57: Recap of The Civil War's First Half (1861-63)
56: The Battle of Fredericksburg and the First Campaign of Vicksburg
55: The Road to The Emancipation Proclamation
54: The Best Opening Scenes in HTDS History
53: A Civil War Christmas with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
52: From Second Bull Run, or Second Manassas to Antietam, or Sharpsburg
51: A Change in Command: Seven Days Battles to the Battle of Cedar Mountain
50: Mississippi Valley 1862: The Battles of New Orleans, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg
49: From Little Mac McClellan to Stonewall Jackson: The Peninsula and Shenandoah Valley Campaigns
48: The Battle of Shiloh: “Now boys, pitch in!”
47: Bull Run, Trent Affair, the Merrimack, & Fort Donelson: The Early Days of the Civil War
46: The Civil War Begins: Fort Sumter, Secession, & Raising Armies
45: Volume IV Epilogue
44: Abraham Lincoln Becomes President of the Divided States of America
43: Honest Abe, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, & John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
42: Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave
41: Kansas! (Bleeding Kansas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, & Caning of Charles Sumner)
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