Sherman Bell

Adjutant General Sherman M. Bell was a controversial leader of the Colorado National Guard during the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903-04. While Bell received high praise from Theodore Roosevelt and some others, he was vilified as a tyrant by the leadership and the miners of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).

Sherman Bell, a former deputy United States marshal in Cripple Creek, Colorado, participated in the Spanish–American War as one of Roosevelt's Rough Riders. General Bell was active in the Masonic order and the order of Elks, and was honored by the Knights of Pythias. A former hardrock mine manager, Bell took the side of the Mine Owners Association against the strikers during a strike of smelter workers, which ultimately included the miners of the Cripple Creek District.

Much of the history written about Sherman Bell has to do with his characteristics, his attitude, and his affectations. William MacLeod Raine spent some time interviewing Bell in 1904, and concluded that Bell, filled with "cocksureness",

...sums up [any situation], largely regardless of the evidence, and comes to an immediate decision. He is one of the most unfettered of men. It is a safe guess that deep down in his heart he does not care one jackstraw for abstract law. He decides what course is best to follow and the legality of it does not trouble him at all. [Bell is not] in the least open-minded, his opinion is unchangeable... Furthermore, he does not value criticism in the least.

Raine said that Bell was "entirely devoid of humor", and "I have never seen him smile except when he was telling how he had hammered the Western Federation."

In 1998 J. Anthony Lukas wrote,

If his campaigns against the federation sometimes took the guise of a holy war, Sherman Bell readily attributed its direction to the sacred trinity of "Me, God, and Governor Peabody." Whatever his military skills—and they were often called into question—Bell had a knack for vivid expression.

General Bell was direct about his purpose: "I came to do up this damned anarchistic federation." Bell justified the ensuing reign of terror as a "military necessity, which recognizes no laws, either civil or social."

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Wikipedia