One hundred five years ago this month opposition against the draft was coming to a boil, including in Appalachia.
With the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917, the need for soldiers to send to Europe to fight Germany was critical and volunteer forces weren’t going to fill that need, so President Wilson established the first draft since the Civil War.
Quickly anti-conscription organizations sprang up, resulting in the federal government just as quickly clamping down, arresting thousands of activists and charging them with treason. People were charged with treason for distributing anti-conscription literature and agitating for resistance to the draft in Pittsburgh; 13 men were held by the federal government in Cincinnati on charges of treason for simply having anti-conscription literature in their possession.
23-year-old George Bolen of Leachtown, West Virginia, was arrested and charged for having anti-conscription literature in his possession which he had gotten from his grandfather by way of his uncle in Akron, Ohio.
And special agents from the Department of Justice were sent to St. Paul, Virginia, to uncover the leaders of an organized group of around 300 men alleged by the federal government to be opposing conscription and to be committing other crimes, including murder and robbery, with the aim of starting an insurrection. Two of the leaders of this group, William McCoy and John W. Phipps, were arrested by these agents and taken to the jail in Roanoke to await trial.
In August, 1917, McCoy and Phipps were sentenced to five years in prison.
