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Y ester day A nd Today—Reviews State Militia Us e Since 1880By SHIRLEY DONNELLYI wonder if anyone reading this column can remember the riot at Ansted on January 8* 1880? That day a number of coal diggers at some mines on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway quit work. They assembled and proposed to compel the miners at Ansted to abandon work and join them.The disturbance alarmed Sheriff William Tyree, then Sheriff of Fayette County.Realizing that he and his deputies were powerless to cope with the situation, Sheriff Tyree appealed to the governor at Wheeling for fifteen hundred soldiers to preserve the peace. John Jeremiah Jacob, Governor of West Virginia sent a battalion of the state militia under the command of Major J.W.M. Appleton to the scene of the rioting. In short order the leaders of the~rioting miners were arrested and order restored. This was the liveliest happening ever witnessed in Ansted which was settledabout 1790.ANOTHER RIOT in Fayette County occurred some thirteen years later. On February 28, 1893, trouble boke out at Eagle on the south side of the Kanawha River between striking miners and representatives of the Wyant Coal and Coke Company. One man was killed and several injured.Robert II. Boone was Sheriff of Fayette County at that time and asked for troops. This appeal was received by Governor Emanuel Willis Wilson at the capitoi, then at Charleston, when the governor had only a week of his term remaining. Governor Wilson sent a battalion of state militia to theassistance of Sheriff Boone.A bridge had been burned and private properties were being threatened with destruction. Efforts at this destruction had been attempted and the situation was tense. When the troops arrived they prevented further hostilities. Disturbers were arrested and jailed at Fayetteville to be dealt with by the court. This was just another one of the bloody chapters in the history of the unionization of the coal miners in the vast New River coal fields.BUT RIOTS were not limited toFayette County in the early days of West Virginia. Early in June, 1894, the Sheriff of Marshall County found himself up against it when there was a riot at Bogg’s Run, near Benwood Junction, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Movement of trains was obstructed and threats of violence were rife.Prominent citizens telegraphed Governor Aretus Brooks Flemingto call out the* militia. In thissituation the Sheriff concurred, After becoming satisfied, said the Governor, that such was the case, the entire First Regiment, under the command of Colonel Fast, and Companies E, F, G, and I of the Second Regiment, under command of Colonel Hodges, were immediately ordered to Bogg’s Run, the whole being placed under the command of General B, D. Spilman, Brigade Commander. . . .The action of the troops prevented great lawlessness. . . . Several times a conflict seemed inevitable, but fortunately was averted. Trains were stopped, obstructions were placed on the track, vast crowds collected, and the trains were moved with theaid of the soldiery.”IN 1894 occurred the movementsof “Coxey’s Army/’ Kelly’s Commonwealers,” and other organizations of irresponsibles. There were calls on Governor Fleming for a military force to repel invading miners from Ohio, at New Haven mines in Mason County, and to protect the Norfolk and Western bridge at Kenova.At another time two companies of soldiers were sent to Kenova, under command of Major Banks, where the advance guard of Kelly’s Army were taken from a train which they had captured, and were driven out of the State. The remainder of the Kelly gang, after this experience, did not attempt to pass through West Virginia to Washington.AFTER EFFORTS at unionizing the coal miners and other groups in West Virginia, which led to widespread strikes, such asthe noted strike of 1902, there followed severe criticism of the use of the state militia, later called the National Guard, as strike breakers. This was often heard for the next twenty-five or thirty years.After I became staff Chaplain of the West Virginia National Guard in 1933 I used to hear it said, “If you join the West Virginia National Guard you may have to shoot your own brother or father.” This was a reference to the Guard’s being called out to quiet trouble in which a Guardsman might have a relative among the rioting strikers. Now with the state, unionized as tight as Dick’s hat band the Guard is called out only in times of a natural disaster such as the recccit flash flood down Charleston way. Today our W. Va. National Guard is on active duty and used as a bluff in the international poker game between the United States and Russia.
Newspaper Details
Beckley Post Herald
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Fri, Dec 22, 1961
Page 2
Full Page
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Anonymous
WV, USA 06 Jul 2022
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