The Battle Of Blair Mountain Lyrics

1921 was the year Seems like yesterday to me Let me tell you about what happened then Back in the mine country We were fightin' hard to build a union 'Cause at forty cents a ton There was no way to feed a family When the minin' day was done The strike had lasted for a year When they shot down Smilin' Sid He was a lawman who stood up for us miners That's the only crime he ever did A hundred miners locked up with no trial There in Mingo-town But the last straw came in Sharples When the gunned the women down (Chorus) We're marchin' on to Mingo Ten thousand men and countin' Here in the hills of West Virginia At the Battle of Blair Mountain We shouted through the hillsides In every union hall We're marchin' on to Mingo Teach them a lesson, once and all We commandeered every freight train To the Kentucky line Took every car that crossed our path And all the guns and ammo we could find The union leaders tried to stop us Mother Jones told us to turn back But we had learned ourselves from the gun thugs There's a time to talk and a time to attack We had no leader, we didn't need one We all knew the way through Logan County And we all knew once we got there We're gonna hang Sheriff Chapin from a sour apple tree (Chorus) For three days and nights we fought them the front was ten miles wide All the cops and scabs in West Virginia Were there on the other side They dropped explosives from their airplanes Such a thing you never saw They shot us with machine guns It was the operator's law We dug trenches and wore helmets That we brought from the Argonne All the way from France to Logan We fought from dusk to dawn President Harding sent in the Army And we left our line to them But the hills of West Virginia Will long remember when (Chorus)