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The Coal Wars were probably the worst incidents of public violence outside of the American Civil War and Bleeding Kansas. Exploitation of the mining proletariat in Appalachia and Colorado lead to strikes, which lead to strikebreakers, and sometimes to shooting, as depicted in movies like Matewan.

The worst incident I'm aware of, though, was the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia. In this case, the combination of native populism and outside Communist agitators lead to an open rebellion. As in, so-bad-that-Baldwin-Felts-did-tactical-bombing-runs rebellion.

Alas, an Appalachian War of Independence is ASB, but what do you all think could have happened if the Coal Wars had gotten worse, or, say, what could have made them worse. In any situation they'll probably still get crushed flat by the Federal government, but if it could somehow escalate to the level of local civil war, I could imagine it being a much bigger deal in the state histories of Tennessee, West Virginia, and Colorado.
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