July 3, 1919. But wait, what about Battery F? Battery F, 148th FA, returns home and Bisbee Riots.

One of the purposes of this blog is to correct errors and misconceptions, and we find that here we're victim of one.

Indeed, careful observers here will note that we've reported the 148th as basically mustering out twice. . . once in New York, and once at Ft. D. A. Russell outside of Cheyenne.  We think we figured out the origin of that confusion, however.  The Camp Mills event was the one that released the unit from the Army's rolls, and the Cheyenne one was the one in which the artillerymen were discharged.

That latter date was taken from a source we were relying on, but contained an error.

Battery F of the 148th wasn't home until this day.

For some reason Battery F had been delayed in returning home and just made it on July 3, something I hadn't run across before.  And upon arriving the men of Battery F were the subject of a big July 3 celebration welcoming their return to the state in Cheyenne.

Company F was entirely from the northern part of the state.  So not only were they the seeming last of the National Guardsmen to return home, they had further to go to get all the way home as well.

While celebrations were going on in Wyoming, riots were going on in Bisbee Arizona.

The riot started off as a confrontation between a while military policeman of the U.S. Army and black cavalrymen of the 10th Cavalry.  The town already had a marked racially tense atmosphere in which strong racial prejudices against Hispanics and Asians were highly exhibited.  In spite of this, black cavalrymen from the 10th Cavalry from nearby Ft. Huachuca did frequent the town. 

As with many towns near Army posts, the town had military policemen in it on frequent occasion and it was just such a confrontation that escalated into a riot.  What exactly occurred is not clear, but the main participants in the event seem to have been white policemen and black cavalrymen.

While there were serious injuries they did not prevent the 10th Cavalry from participating in the Independence Day march the following day.

July 13, 1917. Columbus in the News Again, Conscription, and something going on at Fatima

I quit doing daily newspaper updates some time ago, but given the interesting news here, and as I've done on occasion, I'm posting a "100 Years Ago Today" type entry here regarding July 13, 1917.

As noted yesterday, in one of the largest criminal acts of its type, industrial vigilantism of a type that we no longer see (thankfully) broke out in Bisbee Arizona.  Mining interest operated to illegally arrest and "deport" IWW members from Bisbee to New Mexico, entraining the victims and shipping them off to hapless southern New Mexico.

The IWW, to be sure, was one of the most radical unions going, in an era in which unions were pretty radical.  This was an era in which, for a combination of reasons, radical Socialism, of the type stirring up all sorts of foment in collapsing Russia, was on the rise everywhere and indeed had its presence in American unions.  The IWW, with its concept of "one big union", was one of the most radical of the bunch.

From the June 30, 1917 issue of Solidarity, the Industrial Workers of the World magazine.  One Big Union.

Frankly, in my view, the IWW was really darned goofy, and the concept of "one big union" totally unworkable.  Its no surprise that the IWW, which still exists, never succeeded it reaching its goals.  But the teens and the twenties were its era in the sun, and in Bisbee Arizona it had its moment.

Bibee in 1916.

The reason was simple enough.  Conditions at the Phelps Dodge mine there were bad and the union that had the membership there, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) wasn't doing much.  Some 800 or so workers turned to the IWW.

And the mining interest reacted, gathering up the IWW members and shipping them out of Bisbee.

Where they ended up in poor Columbus.

A humanitarian disaster was in the works, the US had to intervene and did.  Ultimately, while the Federal government determined the act was criminal, what with its scale, and what with all that was going on, nobody was prosecuted for this shocking act.

Amongst the shocks the nations was receiving, we'd note, it became clearer and clearer every day that the draft was going to be big. Really big.  Early registration had somewhat mixed results but was mostly successful.  The Guard was going into  official Federal service, conscripted actually due to an odd view of the US Attorney General that Federalized Guardsmen could not serve overseas, in August.  The big draw of average male citizens was hitting the news.  Even with the big numbers being claimed in the Press at the time, the actual numbers would be much larger.

There's be a lot more than two.  July 12, 1917 cover of Leslie's

Regarding fighting, the second of a series of mysterious events, which had not yet hit the international news but which would start to, occurred on this day.  Three Portuguese peasant children claimed to receive a visit from a mysterious otherworldly lady who then, they claimed, gave them a momentary but vivid glimpse of Hell.  Following that, she gave them a message, which included, but was not limited to, requests for penitential prayers and a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but if penance was not performed, Russia would fall into grave error, spread those errors around the world, nations would be destroyed, and a second war greater than the first would occur in the reign of a Pope who was named but who was not at that time the sitting Pope.  While nobody, including Catholics, are obligated to believe in a private revelation, this series of events, which would end, as the visitor claimed, in October 1917 with a final spectacular event, is hard to discount given that the contents of the messages proved to be true.  And so went the second, July 13, 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.

The Deportation of the Lowell Miners, July 12, 1917

On this day in 1917 up to 1,300 striking miners, members of the IWW, were deported by a deputized mob from what is now Bisbee Arizona to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico.  A committee formed to back the deportation ruled the town for a few months thereafter.  In New Mexico, the Republican Governor pleaded with President Wilson for assistance and received the same.  The refugee miners were then housed in Columbus, New Mexico, lately the location of the famed raid that started off the Punitive Expedition, for a couple of months until their plight could be addressed.  A Federal Commission declared their forced relocation to be "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal".

What a year and a half for Columbus. Small  border town, site of a major raid, giant Army camp, and now a refugee center in one of the worst labor abuses in American history.

Not all well in the New Jersey National Guard, August 31, 1916

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit, a story in the Bisbee paper about a "near mutiny" sparked by an unpopular lieutenant.