Buchanan, and forced the Tennessee General Assembly to reconsider its state convict labor-leasing system. The outbreak of this labor conflict touched off a partisan media firestorm between the miners' supporters and detractors and brought the issue of convict leasing to the public debate.Īlthough the Coal Creek War essentially ended with the arrests of hundreds of former company coal miners during 1892, the adverse exposure that this state conflict with private labor generated nationwide led to the downfall of Governor John P. The Coal Creek War was itself part of a greater labor struggle across Tennessee that was launched against the state government's controversial convict-leasing system, which allowed the state prison system to lease convict labor to mining companies (and other business enterprises) with the effect of suppressing employee wages in the open market across the state. One historian describes the Coal Creek War as 'one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in all American labor history.' Many of these same Coal Creek coal miners were also wounded or killed in small-arms skirmishes during the Coal Creek War, along with dozens of Tennessee state militiamen. These former wage-earning Coal Creek coal miners repeatedly attacked and burned both state prison stockades and mine properties, all while releasing hundreds of the state convict laborers from their bondage to the mine companies. This labor conflict ignited during 1891 when coal mine owners in the Coal Creek watershed began to remove and replace their company-employed, private coal miners then on the payroll with convict laborers leased out by the Tennessee state prison system. The Coal Creek War was an early 1890s armed labor uprising in the southeastern United States that took place primarily in Anderson County, Tennessee.

Harlan County War 1931–39 ( Battle of Evarts).Colorado Coal Strike 1927-28 ( Columbine Mine massacre).UMW General Coal Strike 1922 ( Herrin Massacre).West Virginia coal wars 1912-21 ( Battle of Matewan, Battle of Blair Mountain).Colorado Coalfield War 1913-14 ( Ludlow Massacre, The 10-Day War).Illinois coal wars 1898-1900 ( Battle of Virden, Pana massacre, Carterville Mine Riot).

The Prisoner by Kol Anderson