The Battle of Matewan, often called the Matewan Massacre, was one of the defining events of the West Virginia Mine Wars of the early 1920s. It took place on the afternoon of May 19, 1920, when Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency operatives returned to town after evicting pro-union mining families from nearby Stone Mountain Coal Company housing. While waiting for a train to Bluefield, Albert Felts and other detectives were confronted by Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield, Mayor Cabell Testerman, and others. After futile attempts by the parties to arrest one another, shooting broke out in front of Chambers Hardware Store. Accounts conflict over who fired first, but when the shooting ended ten men were dead: seven Baldwin-Felts detectives, including Albert Felts and his brother Lee, Mayor Testerman, and two local miners. In March 1921, Sid Hatfield and fourteen other defendants were acquitted in Mingo County of the murder of Albert Felts. Afterward Hatfield was charged with blowing up a coal tipple in nearby McDowell County, and on August 1, 1921, he and his friend and deputy Ed Chambers were shot and killed by Baldwin-Felts operatives on the courthouse steps in Welch. Their deaths outraged thousands of union miners across the state, who planned to march on Logan and Mingo counties, and that march culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, where federal and state troops defeated the miners and thwarted the United Mine Workers’ attempt to organize the southern West Virginia coal fields.