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After the Battle of Blair Mountain, grand juries returned 1,217 indictments, including 325 for murder and 24 for treason (against West Virginia, not America). But the charges mostly evaporated. The only treason conviction was against a Walter Allen, who skipped bail and vanished, never to be found. Bill Blizzard, the "general" of the miner army, was tried in the same Jefferson County Courthouse where John Brown had been convicted of treason in 1859. Unlike Brown, Blizzard was cleared. Preacher Wilburn and his son were convicted of murder, but Gov. Howard Gore pardoned them after they served three years in prison.
The mine wars wiped out most of the UMW's funds and left it weak. By 1924, it had lost about half of its West Virginia members. Unions remained under severe attack until 1933, when President Roosevelt's New Deal legalized the right of workers to organize. March leader Blizzard, revered among miners, became UMW district president and led rapid unionization of the Mountain State.
This West Virginia saga caused Blair Mountain to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Haught is editor emeritus of West Virginia's largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail.)
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