$4.46
Details
The Ludlow Massacre: The History of the National Guard's Attack on Striking Miners during the Colorado Coalfield War
Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Ryan Durham
Unabridged: 1 hr 30 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 08/26/2022
Synopsis
As labor unions and movements began to form and coalesce in the 19th century, the tensions between workers and companies led to demonstrations, encounters, and even conflicts that descended into violence. Among those, few were as notorious as the fight that took place on April 20, 1914 at Ludlow in the southern Colorado coalfields, during which two units of the Colorado National Guard had a firefight with striking miners who lived in a United Mine Workers (UMW) camp. The Guardsmen had at least one machine gun, and the strikers were also armed. The gunfire lasted most of the day, and at the day’s end, the miners were routed and fled the camp with their families.
Perhaps as many as a dozen miners in the camp were killed during the fighting, but after it was over, the Guardsmen cautiously entered the camp, did some looting, and then soaked the miners’ tents with kerosene in order to burn the whole camp to the ground. The Guard’s arsonists were unaware that in one tent, four women and 11 children had hidden themselves in a sort of cellar under a tent, seeking protection from the gunfire. After the camp burned, a deeply disturbing aspect of the fighting was discovered: two of those women and all 11 children had been asphyxiated from the smoke of their burning tent.
These grim deaths marked Ludlow as more than just another regrettable coal war battle and earned it the title of the Ludlow Massacre. In the previous several decades, there had been a number of violent incidents during strikes in several states that killed more people, but in 1914, Victorian sentimentality about women and children was still prevalent, and the Ludlow tragedy deeply shocked the nation.
by Charles River Editors
During the Civil War, over 180,000 black men fought in volunteer units as part of the United States Colored Troop (USCT), but it was only after the end of it that they were allowed to enlist in the Regular Army. They did so in four segregated regime...
Published: 12/27/2019
by Captivating History
Explore the captivating life of Martin Van Buren History chiefly remembers Martin Van Buren as the eighth president of the United States (1837- 1841). He was also, however, notable for achieving many firsts in American politics. He was th...
Published: 06/04/2018
by Charles River Editors
By the golden age of the mountain man in the mid-19th-century, there were perhaps only 3,000 living in the West. Their origins were disparate, although they included many Anglo-Americans. A good number hailed from wilderness regions of Kentucky and...
Published: 04/18/2019
by Captivating History
Explore the captivating life of Andrew Jackson!When Jackson left the White House after two presidential terms, he had achieved a rare feat: He left office with even more popularity than when he first entered it. His reputation as a strong president ...
Published: 07/25/2018
by Charles River Editors
By the second half of the 19th century, still less than a century old, the United States had become a regional power. It had soundly defeated its southern neighbor, Mexico, and greatly enlarged itself in the process. America’s navy and mercha...
Published: 02/09/2020
by Charles River Editors
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to whe...
Published: 03/16/2020
by Nicholas Biddle
In 1804, President Jefferson asked two Virginians-Meriwether Lewis and William Clark-to lead an expedition into the unexplored wilderness of North America. The journals of these explorers are both a priceless piece of national history and a great ad...
Published: 03/04/2008
by Charles River Editors
Many of the first artists in the West were assigned to exploration and geological parties, working as archivists and obedient to demands of cold accuracy. However, a few were driven by an imaginative mix of real events and fantastical visions to wh...
Published: 03/16/2020
by Charles River Editors
In the 1600s, cotton and silk fabrics that bore colorful and exotic printed patterns, known as “calico,” were flying off the shelves of the East India Company’s stores. The rapidly escalating demand for calico had taken a visible ...
Published: 10/16/2019