which the miners were paid) and payment in legal tender (as opposed to scrip), which the TCMC had consistently ignored. The governor returned to Nashville the following day, leaving the valley's stockades under the protection of 107 guardsmen. On July 20, just a few days after Buchanan left the valley, the striking miners overwhelmed the guardsmen protecting the stockades at Briceville and nearby Coal Creek, and once again sent the convicts back to Knoxville. After meeting with labor and business leaders in Knoxville, Buchanan negotiated a 60-day truce with the miners, agreeing to call a special session of the state legislature to consider ending the convict leasing system. He also called up an additional twelve guard companies to protect the Coal Creek stockades. The state legislature met in a special session in September 1891 to consider the convict lease system and the events surrounding the Coal Creek War. Buchanan suggested they modify existing contracts to protect free miners, and called for the establishment of a state penitentiary. While the legislature upheld miners' rights to independent checkweighmen and payment in legal tender, it refused to end the convict lease system, and passed bills making it a felony to interfere with state convicts. When the legislature failed to end convict leasing, Buchanan's labor commissioner, George Ford, tried to help the miners by suing the state on behalf of the convicts, arguing that the state's primary lessee, the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company (TCI), had no authority to sublease the convicts to TCMC. In October 1891, the Tennessee Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Peter Turney, ruled against Ford. With nowhere else to turn, the striking miners launched a series of attacks against mining company stockades in late 1891 and early 1892, in some cases freeing the convicts and burning the stockades. By April 1892, the revolt had spread to mines in Grundy County to the south. In August, Buchanan dispatched General Samuel T. Carnes to Coal Creek with over 500 militiamen, and order was finally restored. Buchanan was vilified by both miners and mining company owners as ineffective and incompetent, and was frequently assailed in the press. In the gubernatorial race of 1892, the Democratic Party's Bourbon and New South factions thwarted his bid for reelection, instead choosing Chief Justice Turney as the party's nominee. Buchanan entered the race as an independent, still claiming to represent farmers' interests, and winning the backing