Sherman Bell

[2] Sherman Bell, a former deputy United States marshal in Cripple Creek, Colorado, participated in the Spanish–American War as one of Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

"[5] In 1998 J. Anthony Lukas wrote, If his campaigns against the federation sometimes took the guise of a holy war, Sherman Bell readily attributed its direction to the sacred trinity of "Me, God, and Governor Peabody."

[8] According to Lukas, Sherman Bell's uniform was custom made, with gold lace, cords, and tassels at an estimated cost of a thousand dollars.

Weston Arthur Goodspeed wrote in 1904, [During the Colorado Labor Wars] one figure towered above the discord, strode boldly into the strife, met anarchy more than half way and compelled it to meet him, fight and be quelled, or chased away in arrant fear.

Gen. Sherman M. Bell, adjutant general of the Colorado National Guard, who, with patience that was marvelous in a man of his high mettle, with judgment rare in one just past thirty and with courage which no soldier of any age has excelled, stamped out the nest of vipers that had fastened deadly fangs on the richest mining community in the world, drove the assassins from the State, preserved the lives and property of honest citizens and restored law and order to a section of the State which, for years, had writhed beneath the oppression of groundless malice and envious ignorance...[2] Goodspeed declared Bell world-famous, "the most successful opposer of strikes that this or any other country has ever produced.

[14] George Suggs observed, Using force and intimidation to shut off debate about the advisability of the state's intervention, Brigadier General John Chase, Bell's field commander, systematically imprisoned without formal charges union officials and others who openly questioned the need for troops.

Included among those jailed were a justice of the peace, the Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, and a member of the WFM who had criticized the guard and advised the strikers not to return to the mines.

When the Victor Daily Record, a strong voice of the WFM, erroneously charged that one of the soldiers was an ex-convict, its staff was imprisoned before a retraction could be published.

The prisoners were escorted into the courtroom by a company of infantry equipped with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets,[19] and the soldiers remained standing in a line during the court sessions.

Judge Seeds commented in his closing remarks, I trust that there will never again be such an unseemly and unnecessary intrusion of armed soldiers in the halls and about the entrances of American Courts of Justice.

[22] The Rocky Mountain News editorialized, Adjutant General Sherman Bell should be relieved and removed from command of the troops at Cripple Creek.

[23] The Denver Post opined, ...the real reason [for the National Guard deployment] at Cripple Creek is that the governor proposes to crush the miners' strike.

[24] The Army and Navy Journal weighed in, observing that the Colorado National Guard had been placed, ...in the relation of hired men to the mine operators and [the arrangement] morally suspended their function of state military guardians of the public peace.

Within a week after the arrival of troops, the Findlay, Strong, Elkton, Tornado, Thompson, Ajax, Shurtloff, and Golden Cycle mines began operations again, and replacement workers they had recruited were "practically forced" to go to work.

[37] On January 7, 1904, the Guard criminalized "loitering or strolling about, frequenting public places where liquor is sold, begging or leading an idle, immoral, or profligate course of life, or not having any visible means of support.

"[38] Francis J. Ellison, a commissioned officer of the Colorado National Guard, was assigned by General Sherman Bell to the Cripple Creek District for "special military duty".

The coroner's jury found that management was negligent, having failed to install safety equipment properly,[40] and the hoisting engineer responsible for the men's lives, who was hired as a replacement worker, was inexperienced.

About the middle of February, 1904, leadership of the Colorado National Guard became concerned that the Mine Owners were failing to finance the occupation by covering the payroll of the soldiers.

[39] Major Ellison, who had been under the leadership of Adjutant General Sherman Bell, testified in October 1904 about one of Bell's policies, At about the 20th of January, 1904, by order of the adjutant of Teller County military district, and under special direction of Major T. E. McClelland and General F. M. Reardon, who was the Governor's confidential adviser regarding the conditions in that district, a series of street fights were commenced between men of Victor and soldiers of the National Guard on duty there.

[42] Then the CCMOA began pressuring employers inside and outside the district to fire union miners, issuing and requiring a "non-union card" to work in the area, while the WFM took counter-measures to limit the impact.

[5] A writ subsequently filed with the United States Supreme Court on Moyer's behalf alleged, in part, that "said Sherman Bell and the said Buckley Wells loudly and boastfully, through the public press and otherwise, threatened the destruction and death of anyone who should interfere or attempt to interfere with them by the service of said writ", that "said Sherman Bell and the said Buckley Wells did call to their aid and assistance the members of the National Guard", and that the "Sheriff is powerless to execute the order of the court ... by calling to his aid a posse for the reason that the force under the control of the said Bell and the said Wells and the said Governor of the State of Colorado is vastly greater than any force which the said Sheriff could command.

Immediately after the explosion, the CCMOA and the Citizens' Alliance met at Victor's Military Club in the Armory and plotted the removal of all civil authorities that they did not control.

Rastall records, C. C. Hamlin [secretary of the Mine Owners' Association] mounted an empty wagon, and began a speech which from the first became violent, unrestrained, with judgment and caution thrown to the winds, of a kind that could not but arouse to frenzy men whose passions were already deeply stirred... [He declared that] the people should take the law into their own hands... A single shot was fired.

Eighty strikers at Berwind, who objected to being thus humiliated, were marched by a detail of cavalry for twenty miles to Trinidad, in a scorching hot sun, where sufficient force was available to photograph and register these men according to the Bertillon system.

There had been several misunderstandings with Governor Peabody during the occupation of Colorado's mining districts, and once again Bell went to the media declaring, I shall resign the office of adjutant general probably Monday, and by the 1st of July there will be another man in my place.

I thought then more than ever that the militia ought probably to be in the vicinity of Denver in case of trouble, but imagine my surprise when I was given orders on Sunday night by the Governor not to call out a single man and to abandon my plan of assembling the troops for practice.

I saw several petitions printed in the papers purporting to be addressed to me by the Honest Election League and other independent political organizations, but I never received any formal application for troops.

[53] A union source concluded, in part, General Bell ... did not hesitate to use his high office for the purpose of intimidating and imprisoning those who were striving for decency and common rights.

His present attitude in exposing a portion of Colorado's shame without doubt may be attributed to personal motives rather than a high regard for the liberties of the people and the honor of his State, and from him we may expect only the information that is made public when rascals fall out.

In 1905 the Los Angeles Daily Herald editorialized that, ...General Sherman Bell, the bumptious warrior of Colorado, "may go to Venezuela as an aggressive agent of the American government."