available deputy sheriffs and constables demonstrated their inability to maintain peace in Mingo County. New violence erupted. For the third time, on November 28, 1920, Governor Cornwell called on the Fifth Corps Area commander. Tired of sending troops to put down unrest that immediately renewed after withdrawal, General Read urged the governor to submit a request for aid to the president, according to RS 5297, stipulating that the legislature could not be convened in time to submit its own request. By having Cornwell follow the pre-war procedure, Read hoped to obtain a presidential proclamation under RS 5300 for the strikers to cease, desist, and disperse. In Read's opinion, the unorganized and leaderless miners were likely to ignore the proclamation. He would then be empowered to declare martial lawand deploy his troops near the mines, as in the past, and to assist law enforcement officers as a posse comitatus in arresting union members and thereby end the strike.13

While approving Governor Cornwell's request for military aid on behalf of the president, Secretary of War Baker refused to secure a presidential proclamation. When Baker had initiated the policy of direct access in 1917, he had done so to avoid the delays characteristic of formal presidential involvement. Thus when General Read sent a provisional battalion of the Nineteenth Infantry, commanded by Colonel Herman Hall, from Camp Sherman, Ohio, into Mingo County on November 28, it went with no more authority than its predecessors; that is authority under the direct access policy and paragraph 487 of the army regulations. Cornwell,