Locals called the yearlong struggle that swept five counties from East to Middle Tennessee the “convict wars.” The coalition of farmers and miners that elected John Buchanan governor wanted one thing above all: the end of the system of coerced private prison labor whereby Tennessee’s state government helped mining magnates secure cheap labor and fat profits at the expense of innocent miners trying to earn enough to feed their families. The widely reviled system, so redolent of slavery, created a perverse incentive to lock men up for petty offenses so the state could rent them out to coal
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