The end of World War I in 1918 brought with it the end to two years of relative peace in West Virginia’s ongoing Mine Wars. In 1919, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) renewed its campaign to organize West Virginia’s southern coalfields. About 54,000 of the state’s roughly 91,500 miners were UMWA members; 9,000 of the unorganized workers were concentrated in Logan and Mingo counties. The largest coal producer, U.S. Steel, was openly committed to defeating unionism in those counties, using court injunctions, private guards (“gunmen”), and control of county governments.

On August 14, 1919, a party of Logan miners met with Governor Cornwell, asking him to end alleged abuses of laboring men in the non-union counties. About the same time, union miners began to congregate at the mouth of Lens Creek at Marmet, just southeast of Charleston, intending to march south to liberate the resisting territories, and to overthrow Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, who used his deputies to keep labor organizers out of the county.

Cornwell met with UMWA District 17 President Frank Keeney on September 4, promising to conduct an investigation if the miners dispersed; he repeated the promise to assembled miners at Marmet the next evening. Although a few agreed, some 1,900 men marched toward Coal River. Cornwell threatened to call in federal troops to drive the miners back. (The West Virginia National Guard had not been reorganized following its wartime service.) Keeney persuaded the marchers to stop at Danville in Boone County, and the state chartered special trains to transport them back to the Charleston area on the 6th.

On September 16, Cornwell appointed acting adjutant general Major Thomas B. Davis to lead an investigation, aided by retired Colonel George S. Wallace. Unknown to the UMWA, the team was also ordered to assign responsibility for the march. Between September 22, 1919, and March 13, 1920, Davis held hearings in Charleston and Huntington, and toured the Logan field. He submitted his final report to Cornwell on April 10, 1920. The seven-month study produced over 600 pages of testimony and a lengthy summary pamphlet.

Davis’s investigation yielded two major findings. First, “a calm consideration of [charges of maltreatment by guards and deputies] did not suffice to sustain this charge, or to justify the wholesale indictment of conditions in Logan County.” A second came with the finding of responsibility for the September 4-6 march and another “proposed march” on the 10^th: “The United Mine Workers of America, District 17, lighted the match that started the conflagration.” Many found the Davis report extremely one-sided, with accusations that the findings had been predetermined from the beginning.

The study also increased Cornwell’s suspicions of actual union intent. His relations with Keeney had already soured. Ignoring his promise to defer organizing activity in Logan County during the investigation, Keeney went there on October 16, 1919, and encouraged 51 UMWA members to help organize the region. They were thwarted when armed guards and deputies boarded their train and kept the organizers on board until the train left the county.

The UMWA International Convention had called for a nationwide general strike to begin November 1, 1919. When Keeney threatened that District 17 would join the strike unless its demands were met, Cornwell countered by recommending the formation of “committees of public safety,” or vigilantes, “to alleviate suffering and to aid public officials in protecting lives and property and preserving order.” The governor also requested that federal troops be sent to block a rumored 30,000-man march on Charleston. Soldiers were promptly dispatched from Camp Taylor, Kentucky, and stationed in the Kanawha City section of Charleston, Beckley, and Clothier. (Federal troops were also sent, at governors’ requests, to Tennessee, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana during the coal strike.) Before their withdrawal from West Virginia on November 18, Army intelligence officers had uncovered an alleged plot to assassinate Cornwell and compiled a list of agitators, which they turned over to the newly formed Department of Public Safety (state police).

On November 8, a federal judge issued an injunction to stop the nationwide coal strike. UMWA leaders canceled the strike two days later, but large numbers of miners stayed off the job. In West Virginia, the so-called smokeless coalfields had managed to mine 75 percent of the state’s normal output during the strike. This made the UMWA even more determined to forcibly organize the non-union fields.

Tensions would continue to mount until 1921, when miners again marched toward Logan County and this time clashed with Chafin’s forces in the Battle of Blair Mountain.