LaConte: Strikes and the bullpen
Ordinarily this time of year, if you hear someone talking about strikes and bullpens, you would assume they’re discussing a pitching performance at the World Series.
But go back 120 years in Colorado to early November of 1904, and those terms take on an entirely different meaning.
This year’s presidential election may be contentious, but it has nothing on the 1904 governor’s election in Colorado, which resulted in an anomaly that baseball statisticians might equate to an unassisted triple play — three different governors holding office on the same day.
The election season was contentious due to the Colorado Labor Wars, a situation which resulted in “one of the most insurgent and violent stages that American labor history had ever seen,” as described by Denver University history professor Bill Philpott in “The Lessons of Leadville.“
The Colorado Labor Wars were the culmination of years of strife between mine owners and the unions who were represented by the Western Federation of Miners. The tension reached its height not long after the election of James Peabody in 1902; Peabody took office in January of 1903 and by March, he was already using the Colorado National Guard to help mine owners deal with striking workers, something unprecedented in Colorado.
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In September of 1903, the troops arrested union members at the Cripple Creek district, imprisoning them in a holding facility the media called a “bull pen.” Sherman Parker, a member of the union’s executive committee, was among the most popular of the arrested men.
The Rocky Mountain News obtained an account of the arrest from Parker’s wife, who said soldiers on horseback visited the house at 12:20 a.m. with a letter for Parker.
“The letter was handed to him and then four men rushed into the house and surrounded him, presenting revolvers to his head and warning him not to say anything,” she said. “The room was dark but I could see that the men in the house were soldiers and through the door I also saw several more on the outside. Mr. Parker spoke to the men, saying: ‘Boys, what have I done to cause this action.’ … ‘We have nothing to say to you,’ was the answer.”
This, of course, was a violation of Parker’s Sixth Amendment rights, which state that any person held by the state shall be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.
A writ of habeas corpus was issued by Colorado Judge W.P. Seeds, who demanded Colorado National Guard commander John Chase release Parker and the other prisoners.
“After Judge Seeds had given his decision General Chase arose and announced that under his orders from the governor he could not obey the order of the court and must hold the men,” the Rocky Mountain News reported. “The amazed silence that greeted this bold defiance of the law and the constitution was broken by the sudden sharp order: “Attention!” The soldiers in the room stood at attention and the butts of their rifles grounded heavily on the floor. In response to other orders they proceeded to remove the prisoners. ‘You won’t take him’ was what Mrs. Bessie Parker, the wife of Sherman Parker, said directly after General Chase had ordered the move back to the bull pen. A militiaman sat between her and her husband and quietly pushed her away, and she fell in a dead faint on the floor.”
This was just one of the many dramatic scenes from 1903, and by December of that year, Peabody had issued a proclamation of martial law in Colorado, another unprecedented act.
The violence intensified in 1904, culminating with a dynamite explosion at the Independence Depot train platform in the Cripple Creek district which killed 13 people.
Deportations of union members by Colorado National Guard General Sherman Bell began the next day, with men loaded onto a special train and sent to the state line south of Pueblo.
“About two hundred have been sent from this and near-by camps,” a Denver Post correspondent based in Victor reported. “General Bell estimates that four thousand will be exiled before martial law is abolished.”
Back then, governors were elected every two years, which meant that the dispute was set to culminate with the November election in 1904.
Eagle County newspapers were at odds with each other over which candidates to endorse — the Eagle County Blade supported Peabody while the Eagle Valley Enterprise supported his Democratic challenger, Alva Adams (more on that in this week’s Time Machine, publishing in the Vail Daily on Monday.)
In the end, Adams won the election, but the Colorado legislature determined that election fraud had been committed and voted to remove him from office and reinstall Peabody, on the condition that Peabody immediately step down and cede the seat to his lieutenant governor, Jesse McDonald.
But the move from the legislature happened on the same day that Adams had been inaugurated, so technically, he had been governor briefly that day before Peabody was reinstalled. Peabody, the second governor to hold office that day, then stepped aside and McDonald was sworn in, making McDonald the third person to hold office in one day.
While I compared it earlier to an unassisted triple play, that rare event in baseball has actually happened 15 times in MLB history, so perhaps it’s not the best comparison as the 1904 triple gubernatorial inauguration has only happened once in U.S. history.
A better comparison might say it’s the equivalent of coming back from a five-run deficit to clinch a World Series title, which has only happened once.
John LaConte is a reporter at the Vail Daily who authors the weekly Time Machine feature that runs on Mondays. Email him at jlaconte@vaildaily.com
