Let us look at this move more closely. Major Davis ordered Brockus to Logan on orders from Governor Morgan. This request to Governor Morgan for men to serve warrants could have come only from Don Chafin. Chafin of course knew exactly what was going on as regarded the armed march of the miners. And Governor Morgan knew that the miners were returning home, and that General Bandholtz was going back to Washington that same day. Just why did Morgan rouse police in Mingo County out of bed at 2:30 a.m. in order to be able to serve warrants in Logan County that same day? ESPECIALLY IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT DON CHAFIN HAD THE WARRANTS IN HIS POSSESSION FOR SOME DAYS PRIOR TO AUG. 27?
March Starts Again
Why, in other words, did the warrants have to be served by state police in such a hurry? It seems apparent that Morgan wished to cause an “incident” which would encourage the miners to resume their march on Logan County, thereby forcing the armed intervention of the Federal Government, and giving the coal operators more opportunities to file charges of murder, insurrection, and even treason against the miners and their leaders. If he waited until all the miners had gone home, it might be too late. The iron was, on the night of the 27th day of August, 1921, still hot, and Governor Morgan struck with haste.
Brockus left Mingo County with his armed force about six o’clock on the morning of the 27th and met Don Chafin, who gave the Captain warrants for the arrest of 30 or 40 miners who lived on Little Coal River in Union territory. Brockus picked up some deputies from Chafin, swelling his forces to about 130 men, and they crossed Blair Mountain about dusk in regular military formation. That is, there was an advance guard of 15 men and two guides about 200 yards in advance of the main body of police.
Just on the other side of Blair Mountain they were met by five Union men who challenged them but surrendered without resistance. These men were arrested, evidently without warrants, and placed at the head of the column. This was a thoughtful measure, for the miners were advised to tell anyone who challenged not to fire, and it was also a protection or shield for the police. This same process was repeated several times, with the number of prisoner-shields increasing, until Brockus and his force reached the town of Sharples, where they found another detachment of five miners. Brockus of course maintains that these men fired upon his group of 130 men after he had asked what they were doing there at that time of night. (It could not have been later than eight o’clock.) Whoever fired first, two of the miners were killed and the other three fell, wounded. Shooting then became general, according to Brockus, with miners firing from houses in Sharples and the police shooting back.
However it was, it is a fact that not one of the 130 police and deputies was scratched, while houses in Sharples were pierced by bullets and the challenging patrol of miners lay dead and wounded. News of this shooting at Sharples, done by what had all the appearances of an advance guard of a much larger force, spread through the coal camps of Boone and Kanawha counties. “Don Chafin’s thugs are invading the Union fields, and they have already murdered our men!” was the alarm that struck the ears of the Union miners.
Miners returning home from their intended march to Logan simply turned on their heels, and with angry faces declared that once again they had been doubled-crossed. No leader could have stopped the movement then, not with the tongue of Demosthenes. The Armed March began again.
1/30/1953 (Fifty-first)
That Governor Morgan had ample intelligence reports from the vicinity of Sharples is indicated by his evident close relationship with William M. Wiley, the Vice-President of the Boone County Coal Corporation, and also an operator at Sharples. For both he and Morgan were directors of the reactionary and operator-bossed American Constitutional Association, which we have already mentioned and will treat more fully a little later. Wiley, a South Carolinian by birth, also belonged to the equally reactionary National Association for Constitutional Government and the National Security League, with headquarters in New York. All of these organizations are evidently precursors of the Committee for Constitutional Government, a group which, with John T. Flynn as one of its leading spokesmen, furnishes a warm nest for every reactionary idea ever spawned in America.
Wiley’s Corporation was capitalized at $7 million and was composed as he said, of 32,000 acres of the “best coal land in the United States.” In addition to bossing the above, Wiley also taught Sunday School, and considered himself something of an intellectual. “The doctrines of Karl Marx,” Wiley solemnly told the Senatorial Investigating Committee” have been taught to these people until they have accepted them as a religion instead of the teachings of their mothers.” What their mothers taught Wiley does not indicate, and the exaggeration in his statement has been treated in previous chapters.
Marchers Go to Sharples
Wiley very well understood his own interests, and was evidently exceptionally shrewd in his dealings with the union, enough so that he bowed to the inevitable without outward manifestations of his inner hate. He was without doubt interested in seeing the UMW driven from every coal field in the nation and it pleased him not one bit that his nonunion competitors might also be unionized. This is his revealing remark on the subject: “I met Blizzard on the street the other day – the president of the subdistrict in which my operation is – and he told me that soon the nonunion fields would be unionized and men in my position would be relieved from that competition, and he expected me to join with him in the joy he was anticipating.” What reaction Blizzard really expected from Wiley is not known. What he got later is matter of record – a legal barrage with extermination as its object.
Wiley was at Sharples on Saturday night, August 27 – when Captain Brockus and his men descended on the town. He admits to the Kenyon Committee that he had been informed by telephone that the police were coming, but he says he didn’t believe it. Be that as it may, he certainly told none of his miners. And he confirms the fact that it was not till after this shooting that the miners poured into Sharples from every direction, more or less taking control of the railroad above Sproal, where Little Coal River goes over toward Logan, and the Big Coal River valley extends to Whitesville, and leads through a railroad tunnel into Cabin Creek, Paint Creek and other fields, Wiley says:
“These men (the miners –Ed.) came in on the trains, and some of them marched into our clubhouse where our officers lived and at the point of a gun demanded that food be cooked for them at most unusual hours. Colored people were not supposed to go into the dining room, and they took them as they pleased and they refused to pay for what they got.”
From part of the above statement it seems that the gentlemen from South Carolina did not support certain sections of our Constitution pertaining to race, creed and color, despite his affiliation with organizations carrying the name of that document in their title.
Solons Blame Chafin
Further confirmation that the specific instigation of the latter and more serious part of the Armed March must be placed at the door of the coal operators is found in the report of the investigating Kenyon Committee.
“The cause of this turning back was without doubt the ill-timed service by Captain Brockus, of the state constabulary, acting under the direction and with some of the deputies of Sheriff Chafin. When the marching miners had begun definitely to turn back towards their homes, Sheriff Chafin undertook to serve warrants upon 42 men at Sharples who had held up and disarmed members of the state constabulary on August 12, fifteen days previous. The sheriff, according to his own testimony, had had those warrants for several days, but the time chosen to serve them was after night and with an armed force of about 130 men. Sharples was in the heart of the troubled area and in Union territory. Just at the time the miners had been dissuaded from their first march and had begun returning to their homes and reports had come out of this territory that the trouble was over, the descent upon this town at night to serve these warrants could hardly have had any other effect than to start afresh the threatened trouble.”
If this is so obvious to the senat
orial committee it must have been equally so to Governor Morgan, Don Chafin, and other distinguished citizens who were coal operator partisans. Our theory as to why the Sharples incident occurred has already been given.
As the news spread of the Sharples raid the miners began their march all over again, a fact of which the authorities of Logan County were immediately made aware from a dozen sources. From the nonunion side Don Chafin and his men, possibly 2,000 in all, including deputies, state police and anyone else who could be pressed into service, marched toward Blair Mountain. From the Union side the miners, some with machine guns captured from coal company stores (again, why did these peaceful industrialists maintain such arsenals?), also directed their steps over rutted roads and grassy mountain paths toward the same destination. On August 28, according to the same William M. Wiley before quoted,
“The Logan Operators’ Association passed a ringing resolution, which was telegraphed to the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, who had a meeting, and a committee from the Governor (was sent –Ed.) to Washington to explain to General Bandholtz just exactly what the situation was and to put up to the federal authorities the dire necessity for troops.”
This “ringing resolution” and action bears out and still furthers our theory as to the origin and reasons behind the Sharples incident.
As we have said, Don Chafin was notified from many sources that the miners had turned back after the Sharples raid, and were proceeding toward Logan County. But a very prominent gentleman had the honor of being the first to notify the “law-and-order” sheriff of Logan. His name, along with his own explanation of his telephone call, will be given in the next installment of this series.
1/31/1953 (Fifty-second)
The gentleman who first informed Sheriff Don Chafin that the miners had resumed their march toward Logan was seen recently on television by millions of viewers. He presided at the Republican national convention at which General Dwight Eisenhower was nominated for the office of the President of the United States, with Richard Nixon as his running mate. He is a Republican national committeeman. His name is Walter Hallanan.
His explanation of the matter is given below in a letter to UMW Attorney T.C. Townsend, wherein he politely refuses to testify as a defense witness for William Blizzard in one of the murder trials which grew out off the Armed March.
“I take it that you had the subpoena issued for me in connection with the testimony of Sheriff Chafin of Logan County that he had been given information by me as to the resumption of the march. I recall that you mentioned this matter once before to me and I was perhaps not entirely frank in replying to your question and may have given you the wrong impression. I recall that you said something to me concerning it one evening in front of my house….
“The facts are these, as I recall – I happened to be talking to Siegel Workman of Madison from my home one night about midnight while the trouble was going on. I think I had called him with reference to some political matter, then in the course of the conversation he mentioned to me that the miners had resumed their march toward Logan County. I had been in the Governor’s office earlier in the evening and knew that it was the impression that the miners were returning to their homes. After talking with Workman I called Governor Morgan and told him what I had learned from Mr. Workman. I felt it my duty to give him this information under the circumstances. He in turn asked me to call Sheriff Chafin at Logan and give him the information that I had received from Mr. Workman. I called Sheriff Chafin and told him the source of my information and what I had learned. I really had supposed that he knew of the resumption of the march before that time, but later on when I saw him in Huntington he told me that was the first information he had received concerning the miners turning again toward Logan County.
“I am very sorry if there has been a misunderstanding in the matter. I had intended to talk with you fully about it before the Lewisburg trial was called. You probably have the wrong impression from your former conversation with me as to my knowledge of the matter.
Hallanan Is Shy
“I, of course, would like to avoid any party (sic) in the trial because I have a naturally (sic) antipathy to appearing as a witness. However, I am writing you fully so that you may know just what facts I would have to testify to if called as a witness. If you should desire me after having received this further information, please call me on the phone or write me….”
With the hope that “everything is moving along nicely,” Hallanan closes his letter.
It is interesting historically that Hallanan played this role in the Armed March, but not of great moment. For before the morning sun of August 28, 1921 had wiped the dew from the courthouse lawn Chafin had received ample confirmation of Hallanan’s midnight telephone call. Every able-bodied man who could be lured, persuaded, bought or coerced into joining Chafin’s forces of “law and order” was mobilized into a small army and marched toward Blair Mountain. We say “coerced” advisedly, for Chafin’s methods of recruiting soldiers were in some cases similar to his methods of combating unionism. We offer this affidavit as proof of our contention:
“This day, G.P. Armstrong personally appeared before me, S.M. Foster, a justice of said county (of Boone –Ed.) and being by me first duly sworn says: that he is by occupation a timberman and in the month of August 1921, he was cutting timber for a lumber company in Logan County and when the deputy sheriffs tried to make him fight against the invasion of Logan County, he went out of the lumber camp and hid in the woods for three days, and came back to work and worked up until September 21, 1921, when he ran into some deputy sheriffs names unknown, knowed (sic) only were sheriffs by their badges, about dark and (one) of them said, there is the damn son of a bitch who would not fight against the damn rednecks and the deputy sheriffs told him they believed he was a damn redneck and that they were going to kill him and when he started to run, one of the deputy sheriffs knocked him down with a pistol and three or four of them beat him and kicked him until he went unconscious (sic) and he come to himself at 2:30 the next morning and went into the hills and the next day he came down to Jeffrey in Boone County and further says he would not go back to Logan County as knows they would kill him.”
Being “drafted” in Logan County in 1921 involved something more than a letter of greetings!
Fabulous Logan County
There is so much that should be told of Logan County. We fear that we have already endlessly bored the reader through our anxiety for thorough and incontrovertible documentation. We shall linger no more, therefore, upon the peculiar system of government in that area and era, nor shall we speak of the unbelievable harshness of men such as Chafin and William H. Coolidge, chairman of the board of directors of the Island Creek Coal Co. We can not refrain, however, from noting that Coolidge was from Manchester, Massachusetts, and he got in on the ground floor in Logan County in 1901, buying 30,000 acres of coal land.
He was a director in at least 20 corporations, more than he could remember, and his net profits for one year ran to $2,200,000.
Coolidge, needless to say, was more than a little arrogant in his testimony before the Kenyon committee. When he had finished, he asked Sen. David I. Walsh, also of Massachusetts, if it hadn’t been “unfortunate” that he had answered questions the way he did. “No, sir,” replied Walsh, “I will tell you what, I have claimed there were persons like you for 10 years and nobody would believe us, and you have exhibited yourself, and I am delighted with it, if you ask me.”
Incidentally, we note that we have referred to a Republican in this installment. With fine impartiality we shall point out that in 1921 Logan County was a Democratic stronghold.
But we leave these interesting asides, and revert to the armed men who were heading toward a collision on Blair Mountain.
2/3/1953 (Fifty-third)
As has been related, after the Sharples incident of August 27 the miners resumed their march toward Logan, Don Chafin was warned that this was the case, and the two opposing forces began to lin
e up on opposite sides of the Coal River-Guyandotte River water- sheds. It was deadly serious business and both sides were well-armed, but organization in both “armies” was somewhat helter-skelter, as is shown by the fact that no one to this day seems to know, even within some thousands, just how many men were involved.
Governor Morgan sent W.E. Eubanks to Logan County to take charge a day or so after he had been informed that the miners were still on the move. Eubanks was a traveling salesman, a member of the West Virginia Legislature, and a colonel in the National Guard. When asked how many men he commanded at this time Eubanks replied that “It was estimated at from 2,500 to 4,000.” Neither did he know the size of the force opposing him, saying that it was supposed to be from 5,000 to 8,000 strong, but he didn’t know exactly.
The confusion on both sides of Blair Mountain must have been enormous. The Union men and their sympathizers poured in and around Clothier and Sharples, using every type of transportation, just as they had in the initial part of the march. Men not accustomed to military ritual, and excited anyway, gave some highly original variations on “I Come Creeping” when replying to a challenge. But so long as the idea was about right they were permitted to pass. On the south side of Blair Mountain the antiunion forces set themselves up with nurses and doctors and commissaries and flung out a battle line between 15 and 18 miles in length.
One observer described the action of the next few days when he said that each group went up its respective side of the mountain and both shot at the top. A great deal of shooting went on, that is certain. The operators had a number of machine guns, and the miners had captured at least one themselves, with a miner operating it who had been a gunner in World War I. Eubanks, the traveling salesman colonel, judged that his side fired between 500,000 and 600,000 shots and he supposed the miners “wasted as much as we did.” Eubanks had a weapon the miners did not possess, however. This was the airplane. The coal operators hired aviators W.F. Denim, Earl Halloran and R.S. Haynes to “observe” for them. At least Denim and Halloran claimed that they did nothing but observe. Haynes, however, admitted that he dropped two types of bombs on the miners, one explosive and the other designed to cause nausea and vomiting.
When Miners March Page 20