In August 1921, an estimated 15,000 coal miners and their allies took part in the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history, the culmination of a struggle that had begun a decade earlier when miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek struck in 1912 against deplorable conditions in the mines and company-controlled towns, formed tent colonies, endured winter hardship and deadly attacks, won concessions after a year, and organized into locals of the United Mine Workers of America. The movement spread, but Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties remained nonunion, and after a strike began in Mingo County in May 1920, Matewan police chief Sid Hatfield became a hero to miners by temporarily stopping mine guards from carrying out evictions; when the guards later tried to arrest him, the ensuing battle left seven mine guards, two miners, and Matewan’s mayor dead, and Governor Ephraim Morgan answered by declaring martial law in Mingo County. The crackdown fell heavily on unionizing miners, with activists jailed without trial and families assaulted in camps, and after Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers were murdered by mine guards on the McDowell County courthouse steps on August 1, 1921, while unarmed and with their wives, many miners came to see themselves as fighting to reclaim basic rights as American citizens. They gathered in Marmet, formed an encampment on Lens Creek, wore red bandanas as a sign of solidarity that earned them the name Redneck Army, and followed Bill Blizzard, a 28-year-old miner from Cabin Creek who planned to free jailed miners, support the Mingo strike, and unionize the southern counties. To do so they had to pass through Logan County, where Sheriff Don Chafin, whose salary was paid by coal operators, had assembled 3,000 deputies and mine guards armed with machine guns along Blair Mountain’s 15-mile ridgeline. Beginning on August 31, columns of miners led by World War I veterans launched disciplined attacks, stayed behind cover, and tried to flank the defenders during four days of fighting marked by automatic weapons and rifle fire. The miners relied on volunteer nurses, donated supplies and arms, and supporters such as Isabella Riggs, who prepared hundreds of meals daily. The battle drew national attention, and President Warren Harding sent four regiments of the U.S. Army, which arrived on September 3; unwilling to fight the federal army, the miners accepted a ceasefire negotiated by Blizzard the next day and withdrew, with some surrendering their weapons. Hundreds of miners were then indicted on charges including murder and treason, but at the Charles Town Treason Trials the following year a jury acquitted Blizzard, prosecutors dropped most charges against others, and neither Chafin nor the coal operators faced charges, while coal company lawyers led the prosecution and later billed the state. The conditions behind the uprising—company towns, company stores, poor wages, dangerous work, blacklisting, forced evictions, and the brutality of mine guards—persisted for another decade until changes in federal labor law gave miners another chance to unionize.