miners in a local bar. Three guards armed with rifles threatened a miners' camp. Late in the evening of Sunday, July 10, the miners discovered that their union secretary, Charles Siringo, was a mine owner spy hired from the Pinkerton Agency. During that evening and into the early morning hours of July 11, armed miners surrounded the shuttered Frisco mill of the Gem mine. A firefight broke out. During the gun battle, miners dropped a barrel of gunpowder down the flume of the mill; the powderkeg exploded, destroying the mill and killing a non-union miner. The mine owners demanded that Governor N. B. Willey, a former mine manager, proclaim martial law. Although violence in the region had ended, Willey called out the National Guard. President Benjamin Harrison ordered federal troops to back up the Idaho state troops. Martial law lasted four months. Nearly 600 miners were arrested and confined in a large outdoor prison, or bullpen. But since most of the local inhabitants were miners or sympathized with them, the state had little chance of obtaining convictions. Several union leaders, however, were arrested for violating the district court's injunction—Ed Boyce among them. Boyce and the other union officials were confined in the Ada County Jail. Formation of the WFM The Coeur d'Alene miners had received financial assistance from miners' unions in Butte, who had paid legal fees for their attorney, James H. Hawley. While the union leaders were still in jail, Hawley suggested that mine unions in the West needed to form a united front, and the union leaders agreed. The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was formed in 1893 in Butte. Boyce served a six-month jail term for contempt of court for his role in the 1892 Coeur d'Alene miners' strike, and was blacklisted by the mine owners. After his release in 1893, Boyce prospected for a time in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains before returning to Coeur d'Alene. He obtained work in the mines and was elected president of the Coeur d'Alene Executive Miners' Union, a post he held until 1895. Although not present for its founding, Boyce attended the WFM's second convention in 1894 and was elected to its executive board. With its headquarters in Coeur d'Alene, nearly all the mines in the Idaho panhandle except for the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mine recognized the union. Still, the WFM barely survived the next three years. Public service In 1894,