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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 18, 1922
Nations Newspapers Opine on Acquittal of William Blizzard
From The Literary Digest of June 17, 1922:
“TREASON” AND REASON
THE NAME OF WILLIAM BLIZZARD, West Virginia miner, has been added to the few who have been tried in the United States for treason. Like most of the others, he was acquitted, yet, notes the Washington Herald, “there is plenty of reason to fear that if the case had been tried in Logan County he would have been found guilty and given the severest sentence possible on the treason charge.” That any fair-minded jury must acquit the youthful official of the United Mine Workers of America was obvious from the first to The Herald, the New York Times, and other papers, and why the indictment for treason was brought is more than The Times can understand. “Attorneys for Blizzard,” caustically observes the New York Evening World, “might have claimed that the crime charged was impossible, because no Government existed in West Virginia against which treason was possible.” “In fact,” agrees the New York Herald, “Government in West Virginia had broken down, and its power had passed in part to the mine operators.” The leaders of the union miners who marched against Logan and Mingo counties, last August, according to this paper, were manifestly trying to take the law into their own hands, “which the non-union coal operators, controlling the local government in the two counties, already had done.”
In the opinion of the conservative New York Times:
Whatever their offenses, the unionist miners and their leaders were not trying to subvert the Government of West Virginia in whole or in part. Logan County can scarcely be said to have been under the rule of law or to have had a republican form of government. Private war was answered by private war. Some constitutional guaranties appear to have been suspended by conspiracy of non-union operators. If there was any “treason,” it was on both sides; but there was no excuse for charging the leaders of the misguided invaders of Logan County with the highest of crimes.
Treason, however, is one of the most difficult crimes to prove. The offense, under the laws of West Virginia, must be established by an overt act, which must be testified to by two witnesses. Moreover, ruled the Judge at the Charles Town trial, since an indictment for treason had been brought in Logan County, only overt acts committed by Blizzard within that county could be regarded as evidence of guilt. It was the contention of the prosecution in the trial, which began late in April and lasted nearly five weeks, that several thousand West Virginia miners engaged in a demonstration against the non- union operators of Logan and Mingo counties; that they seized railway trains and automobiles, and waged a battle against State policemen, deputy sheriffs, and other State forces on Blair Mountain, and surrendered only to Federal troops. Blizzard, maintained the prosecution, was in touch with the miners during their advance into Logan County, and during the four days’ battle of Blair Mountain. The prosecuting attorneys, reports George Wood, staff correspondent of the New York Globe, were not the Attorney General of the State, or the district attorney of the county in which the trial was held, or the district attorney of Logan County, in which the indictment was found, but attorneys for the coal operators.
The miner, on the other hand, had the backing of the United Mine Workers, with its retinue of lawyers. It was their contention that Blizzard did not go into Logan County with treasonable intent, but to induce the miners to abandon their march; that the gathering of miners was first of all to aid in forming a constitutional league for the purpose of restoring civil liberty in the State by political action. As for the battle of Blair Mountain, that was forced upon the marching miners by State police, according to the version of the defense lawyers.
“In a large measure the State of West Virginia was on trial in the Blizzard case,” remarks the Duluth Herald, “and the verdict of acquittal as to Blizzard was equivalent to a verdict of ‘guilty’ against the State.” According to The Herald:
The State Government was clearly in alliance with the employers against the strikers from the beginning. A State which allies itself unfairly with one class against another invites what, when it happens, it is likely to call “treason”. The State has no business in any labor controversy except to preserve order; and it can not take sides with one or another, even under the guise of preserving order, without making itself at least in part guilty of what comes of it.
The New York World, too, blames the State Government:
The State of West Virginia is itself responsible for the abuse of power in Logan County. Because it has failed to interfere with the operators’ government it is responsible for the disorders induced by that government. Whether or not William Blizzard was involved in the armed march, his action was assuredly not treason. It can not be treason by any definition to rebel against a denial of constitutional guaranties.
But it is just as well that the case was tried, thinks the Washington Herald. Many editors believe that since Blizzard was acquitted the cases against the other miners will either be dropt or postponed until fall.
Meanwhile, the New York Globe notes-“the government of West Virginia will probably take measures to dissociate itself from the operators who so nearly succeeded in making themselves the State.”
Nevertheless, maintains the Baltimore Evening Sun, “those who have talked to the coal operators of the West Virginia fields know that they have a case. They have a case in which doubtless some of the fundamental tenets of Americanism are involved.”
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Fred Mooney, Mingo Co Gunthugs, UMWJ p15, Dec 1, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA23-PA14
The Literary Digest
(New York, New York)
-June 17, 1922, page 14-15
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028101460&view=1up&seq=1006
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 17, 1922
From the United Mine Workers Journal:
Coal Operators of Logan County Fail to Convict William Blizzard
Tag: Billy Blizzard
https://weneverforget.org/tag/billy-blizzard/
FORGETTING THE MINE WARS: ERASING INSURRECTION IN WEST
VIRGINIAN HISTORY
by Sam Heywood, Department of History
Brigham Young University, April 2020
(search: americanism)
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1115&context=studentpub_uht
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Battle of Blair Mountain – Louise Mosrie