“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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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
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
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