re: #10 Decatur Deb

Follow-on.

MG Leonard Wood dispatched 1600 troops, who arrived late, but definitely on the mine owner side. They were sent at owner request.

[Link: www.wvculture.org…]

Wood’s involvement was during an earlier episode, in 1919. Wood had been a big supporter of Attorney-General Palmer during the Red Scare that followed the end of WW1. This is cited as one of the reasons he failed to win the 1920 Republican presidential nomination. He was gone by the time of the “Battle of Blair Mountain,” which occurred two years later in 1921.
Troops did arrive in time to separate the combatants at Blair Mountain. There is little evidence that they definitely sided with the mine owners and a fair amount that they did not.

General Bandholtz ordered a cease-fire to go into effect at 4 p.m. In compliance with Governor Morgan’s order to obey Bandholtz, the sheriff’s deputies and the volunteers of the Logan force immediately disbanded. The miners, reassured then that they would not be attacked, and unwilling to resist so many regulars and the power of the national government, surrendered to the federal troops or simply went home. Although casualty figures were not kept by either side, best estimates put the death toll during the Battle of Blair Mountain at sixteen with all but four of the dead being miners. None of the casualties were inflicted by federal forces.43

Between September 4-8, 1921, federal troops disarmed and sent home without incident nearly fifty-four hundred miners. Having dramatically restored peace and order, virtually without firing a shot and without army-induced bloodshed, General Bandholtz refused Governor Morgan’s subsequent request for military posses to help civil authorities arrest miners wanted for violations of state laws. The maintenance of long-term order in West Virginia and the arrest of suspects, in Bandholtz’s mind, was not an army job once calm was initially restored. Military intelligence agents investigated union headquarters and meeting halls for evidence linking the marchers to a radical conspiracy. The agents found almost no radical literature, in spite of coal operator claims, and determined that a mere 10 percent of the miners were foreigners, “poor ignorant creatures who will believe anything that they are told.” One intelligence officer stated in his report, “I cannot find that any organization except the UMW operating in this field openly… . A small amount of I. W. W. and Bolshevist literature has been taken from departing miners.” Although trouble was expected by the army prior to its arrival in West Virginia, during the entire deployment no violent incidents by miners against federal troops were reported.

Mitchell, of course, was a notorious publicity hound and, like Wood, a Red Scare enthusiast. He did advocate the use of aerial gunfire and tear gas bombs to disperse the miners (though not the sheriff’s forces and company goons). Like many of the extreme positions he advocated during his career, this one fell on deaf ears. The reconnaissance flights were intended first to determine the condition of Matawan field as a forward base and, later, to provide intelligence for Gen. Bandholtz’s successful effort to envelop the battle area and restore the peace.