political opposition. General Bandholtz first recommended a partial withdrawal of regulars on September 7. The next day Secretary Weeks ordered the return of the Twenty-sixth Infantry to Camp Dix, the Eighty-eighth Aero Squadron to Langley Field, and the Chemical Warfare Detachment to Edgewood Arsenal. Countering the withdrawal, Republican Senator Howard Sutherland pressed Weeks to retain a federal force near Charleston as a deterrent to future mining disorders.45

Weeks, like General Bandholtz, opposed detaining federal troops for "police duty," especially when congressionally-mandated budgetary constraints favored immediate return of all regiments to their home stations. Nevertheless, bowing to the request of the senator, the Secretary of War placed the remainder of federal troops, now less than thirteen hundred men, under the commander of the Nineteenth Infantry, Colonel Carl A. Martin. Thisforce was to withdraw in phases over several weeks, a period deemed sufficient for Governor Morgan to replace them with units of the soon-to-be activated West Virginia National Guard. On November 3, a board of army officers from the Fifth Corps Area met with Morgan's adjutant to draw up a schedule for the prompt deployment and allocation of the new guard units throughout the state. One month later, the last federal unit in West Virginia, a battalion of the Tenth Infantry, boarded a train for Columbus Barracks, Ohio, quietly ending the army's involvement in the West Virginia coalfield wars.46

During the three months of federal military intervention, the army successfully restored order. However, the fundamental political, social, economic, and labor issues which caused federal military intervention in the first