[citation needed] Through July, Jones rallied the workers, made her way through armed guards to persuade another group of miners in Eskdale, West Virginia to join the strike, and organized a secret march of three thousand armed miners to the steps of the state capitol in Charleston to read a declaration of war to Governor William E. Glasscock.

On July 26, miners attacked Mucklow, present-day Gallagher, leaving at least twelve strikers and four guards dead.

On September 1, a force of over 5,000 miners from the north side of the Kanawha River joined the strikers' tent city, leading Governor Glasscock to establish martial law in the region the following day.

The 1,200 state troops confiscating arms and ammunition from both sides lessened tensions to some degree, but the strikers were forbidden to congregate, and were subject to fast, unfair trials in military court.

Meanwhile, strikers' families began to suffer from hunger, cold, and the unsanitary conditions in their temporary tent colony at Holly Grove.

In retaliation that evening, the Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill and a group of detectives attacked the Holly Grove miners' settlement with an armored train, called the "Bull Moose Special", attacking with machine guns and high-powered rifles, putting 100 machine-gun bullets through the frame house of striker Cesco Estep and killing him.

[9] Another miners' raid on Mucklow killed at least two people a few days later,[10] and on February 10 martial law was imposed for the third and final time.

Mother Jones was arrested on February 13 in Pratt and charged in military court for inciting riot (reportedly for attempting to read the Declaration of Independence), and, later, conspiracy to commit murder.

He released some thirty individuals held under martial law, transferred Mother Jones to Charleston for medical treatment, and in April moved to impose conditions for the strike settlement.

The AP's specific reasons for dropping the suits, and its general relationship to labor, are explored in Upton Sinclair's 1919 exposé The Brass Check.