Overview

The West Virginia mine war of 1920-21, a major civil insurrection of unusual brutality on both sides, even by the standards of the coal fields, involved thousands of union and nonunion miners, state and private police, militia, and federal troops. Before it was over, three West Virginia counties were in open rebellion, much of the state was under military rule, and bombers of the U.S. Army Air Corps had been dispatched against striking miners. The origins of this civil war were in the Draconian rule of the coal companies over the fiercely proud miners of Appalachia. It began in the small railroad town of Matewan when Mayor C. C. Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield sided with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who attempted to evict the miners from company-owned housing. During a street battle, Mayor Testerman, seven Baldwin-Felts agents, and two miners were shot to death. Hatfield became a folk hero to Appalachia. But he, like Testerman, was to be a martyr. The next summer, Baldwin-Felts agents assassinated him and his best friend, Ed Chambers, as their wives watched, on the steps of the courthouse in Welch, accelerating the miners\u2019 rebellion into open warfare. Much neglected in historical accounts, Thunder in the Mountains is the only available book-length account of the crisis in American industrial relations and governance that occured during the West Virginia mine war of 1920-21.

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9780822954262

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A colorful account of the open warfare in West Virginia's dark and bloody coal fields in 1920 and 1921. . . . This is a solidly researched account of the story. --Library Journal

Sympathetic account by a former UPI bureau chief (Richmond, Va.) of the fierce confrontation between striking miners and local and national governments that was also background for John Sayles' movie Matewan. Sayles lends a perfunctory introduction to Savage's reportorial and sometimes melodramatic rendering of the largest armed insurrection in America since the Civil War. All told, several thousand miners and several thousand opposing West Virginia militia, federal troops, and even Air Corps were involved in the battle, which began when Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield chose to side with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who were attempting to block the formation of the miners' union. The deaths of Hatfield and several Baldwin-Felts agents triggered larger wars involving more than ten thousand combatants, climaxing at the Battle of Blair Mountain. Joining the miners' side were radical luminaries Mother Jones and John C. Lewis; meanwhile, President Warren Harding took a federal stand against the miners, ordering them at one point to lay down their arms. In the end 1,217 indictments were returned for insurrection or complicity to riot; 325 murder charges were filed; and 24 men were indicted for treason. Savage shows how the failure of the miners' war dealt a long-term blow to union morale nationally, and how in the short-term it effectively destroyed the economic strength of the mining industry. Lucid but superficial, lacking creative analysis and scholarly rigor. The heart of this event never beats loud enough here - a shame given its importance in US labor history. (Kirkus Reviews)

The lively narrative, written by a former professional journalist and first published in 1985, is preceded by an explanatory introduction by John Williams. --International Review of Social History

The lively narrative, written by a former professional journalist and first published in 1985, is preceded by an explanatory introduction by John Williams. <br> --International Review of Social History

The lively narrative, written by a former professional journalist and first published in 1985, is preceded by an explanatory introduction by John Williams. International Review of Social History

Author Information

Lon Savage, a native of West Virginia, was bureau chief of United Press International in Richmond, Virginia, and a newspaperman for ten years.

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