Mountaineers Are Free: A History of the West Virginia National Guard (review)
Rent from DeepDyveMountaineers Are Free: A History of the West Virginia National Guard
Since its first incarnation in 1978, Kenneth Bailey’s publication has undergone significant revision and expansion. Mountaineers Are Free now traces the origins of West Virginia’s Army National Guard to a single company of Berkeley County riflemen commissioned under Captain Morgan in 1735. During the Seven Years War and the American Revolution, Berkeley riflemen fought under George Washington at Fort Duquesne (1754) and in his disastrous 1776 New York campaign. From these colonial militiamen evolved today’s professional military organization.
Western Virginia contributed soldiers to the War of 1812, with one company from Cabell County even participating in the pivotal Battle of New Orleans. This same unit also came under Federal service during the Mexican-American War, while others served in volunteer regiments. Bailey also considers the simmering Civil War debate concerning West Virginia’s alignment. His conclusion, that West Virginia should be viewed as a border state, is supported by recent findings from the George Tyler Moore Civil War Center at Shepherdstown. Their data places 22,000 to 25,000 Mountaineers in Union ranks, while nearly 20,000 fought for the South. [End Page 117]
During the Reconstruction and Gilded Age, state governors and delegates voted to curtail funding to West Virginia’s militia. After 1865, the state guard had a limit of one hundred troops, whose officers were appointed solely through political connections. Only when labor disputes erupted on the railroads and inside mining camps, did the West Virginia government commission a professional guard. Bailey devotes several chapters to analyzing the state’s infamous use of West Virginia guardsmen against striking workers on behalf of powerful interests.
Between 1877 and 1921, labor-capital conflicts pitted Mountaineers against one another, beginning with the historic railway strike in Martinsburg. West Virginia guardsmen were also sent to intervene in major coal mine strikes. Guardsmen were used even more frequently against fellow Mountaineers during the first two decades of the twentieth century, in the mine wars of 1912–1913, as well as the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921). In fact, the state’s soldiery saw more action against the labor unions than they did in the Spanish American War or World War I.
Bailey stresses the guard’s corporate connections as a primary cause for low enlistments among working-class Mountaineers before 1941, although a paltry budget may have discouraged membership. At one point, William Page, owner of Hawk’s Nest coal mine, also held officer’s rank in the West Virginia National Guard (63). World War II, however, brought higher levels of professionalism to West Virginia’s National Guard, which has not diminished. During World War II, Mountaineer units provided critical security throughout Latin America and took part in the Aleutian Islands campaign. African Americans were also permitted to enlist for the first time, albeit in a separate National Guard regiment, which disbanded after integration in 1947.
Just prior to the Korean War, West Virginia’s National Guard underwent a modernization process that granted the state nearly 6,000 soldiers and airmen. One infantry combat team and one fighter squadron were organized just in time to send elements for the Korean conflict, where the 1092nd Engineers Battalion and members of the 167th Fighter Squadron saw combat action. West Virginia’s guard units remained in the continental United States during the Vietnam War, but were involved in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Currently, West Virginia National Guard units may be found in sectors of the Global War on Terror, in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as the Balkans.
Owing to the controversial role the state guard once played in laborcapital disputes, Bailey set out to rehabilitate their historical record. In [End Page 118] this goal the author succeeds, as the National Guard’s twentieth-century professionalism eclipses its rather tarnished role in West Virginia’s stormy adolescent period. Bailey uses both union and corporate sources with an objective eye, imbuing his book with a very balanced narrative. One fascinating element is...
