The Jefferson County Courthouse Treason Trials of 1922

The Jefferson County Courthouse in Charles Town, West Virginia. NPS photo / Susan Salvatore, 2019.

Two treason trials in one town

In two centuries, the Jefferson County Courthouse in Charles Town, West Virginia, has hosted two nationally significant treason trials.

• 1859: militant abolitionist John Brown was tried there for treason and murder after his raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. That courthouse was heavily damaged in the Civil War and largely rebuilt in 1871–1872.
• 1922: in the spring and summer, the second-floor courtroom saw the treason trial of coal miner and union activist William (Bill) Blizzard and his fellow miners — which, like Brown's, captured the nation's attention.

After Blair Mountain

After the Battle of Blair Mountain — the largest pitched battle in American labor history — West Virginia's governor sought federal charges against the union miners who had surrendered to federal troops. The federal government declined, continuing a Senate investigation of conditions in the coal counties instead. So the state prosecuted: in the winter and spring of 1922 it indicted more than 500 miners for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, being an accessory to murder, and treason against the state.

The treason charge drew the most attention. It was brought against 20 members of United Mine Workers (UMW) District 17, which had worked to unionize West Virginia's coal fields since the early 1900s. The stakes went far beyond the state: labor leaders feared that a conviction would legitimize the harsh anti-union tactics the trials exposed, and let them spread to other industries and regions.

The Binghamton Press, April 28, 1922, on the miners' trials.

The trial

• A neutral venue: to find an impartial jury, the trials were moved from the coal region to Jefferson County, more than 250 miles away by train, where there was no coal mining.
• Shaky ground: the county prosecutor, John T. Porterfield, thought the charges "improper," stepped aside, and called the trials "a waste of scarce resources and mean-spirited vendettas." Private attorneys C. W. Osenton and A. M. Belcher took over — the "Coal Dust Twins," the miners called them, for their close ties to the mine operators.
• The defense: UMW lawyer Thomas Townsend led it, with Harold Houston, who had worked closely with District 17 and raised money for the defense even before the indictments. During the march on Logan, District 17 secretary-treasurer Fred Mooney had helped set up the Mingo County Defense League, and donations from across the country and the world soon built a "Miners Defense Fund" of more than $50,000.
• Who paid: organized labor — even in industries unconnected to coal — paid for the defense, while the coal operators paid for the prosecution (later billing the state $125,000 in legal fees). Neither the county prosecutor nor the state attorney general took part, and many observers saw the state as having handed its legal duty to the coal barons.

Bill Blizzard was tried first, for treason. The press coverage turned regional labor issues into a national conversation — most of all in coal-rich Pennsylvania, where papers from Altoona to Wilkes-Barre reported daily (the Scranton Republican most thoroughly), and in New York, where the Brooklyn Citizen and the New York Times covered each day's testimony. UMW president John Lewis sat at the defense table, not in the audience.

The courthouse interior, from the Historic American Buildings Survey, 1936. Library of Congress/HABS.

As the first treason case, Blizzard's set the standard for the rest. By most accounts he led the march; the question was whether he was in command when the marchers reached Blair Mountain. Miners who had turned state's witnesses said he commanded the miners' army throughout. Defense witnesses said they had seen him in Charleston during the march, or that he helped broker the surrender after the Army stepped in. The defense's star witness, a U.S. Army infantry captain, testified that he never heard miners talk of fighting the government — they wanted to "protect the women and children" from Chafin's deputies in Logan County.

Acquittal, and its cost

After more than four weeks, Blizzard was acquitted on May 25. Miners and local supporters celebrated in Charles Town, and that day Charleston gave him a parade. A Duluth Herald writer saw more in it: "In a large measure the state of West Virginia was on trial in the Blizzard case and the verdict of acquittal as to Blizzard was equivalent to a verdict of 'guilty' against the state."

The trials were a turning point. Though Blair Mountain had drawn national attention to the miners' fight for basic rights, the long, costly trials ended the decade-long struggle in the state's coal fields:

• District 17's treasury was nearly empty, and it could no longer support families still on strike.
• The UMW's national leaders cut off District 17's funding, officially ending Frank Keeney's two-year strike.
• In the post-World War I slump, union membership fell nationwide. Without the union, the fight against the operators' abuses stopped; families suffered under the mine guard system, and miners' wages plummeted through the 1920s into the Great Depression.
• Only with Franklin D. Roosevelt and the labor-friendly laws of the New Deal did West Virginia's coal miners — and workers nationwide — win the right to fully unionize.

The courthouse today

The Jefferson County Courthouse is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2023. National Historic Landmarks — there are just over 2,600 — are places of exceptional value in illustrating the nation's history; all are listed in the National Register, the official list of historic places worthy of preservation, authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Read the National Register nomination and the National Historic Landmark nomination.

More: Resources on the West Virginia Mine Wars.

Sources

Based on "Jefferson County Courthouse Treason Trials," West Virginia Mine Wars series, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source dates the trials once to 1921; this page follows its account of the spring and summer of 1922. Its first name for the governor is not repeated here.