Anti-Military Heroes: The Power Brothers, WWI Draft Resisters

By Max McNabb
May. 07, 2015

Old man Power didn’t want his sons to be cannon fodder in the First World War. Jeff Power told his boys, John and Tom, not to register for the draft. The rich man’s war had nothing to do with them. In 1918, the Power family, originally from West Texas, had a gold mine to work in Arizona’s Gila Valley.

“They reacted the way Texans would react,” historian Jeff Robenalt says in the documentary Power’s War. “They didn’t cause the war… they didn’t make the draft. Why should they register for it?”

The young brothers planned to remain in the Galiuro Mountains until the war ended, then everything would blow over. But the US government had other plans. On February 9, 1918, Deputy US Marshal Haynes, Sheriff McBride, and Deputy Kempton met with volunteer Deputy Kane Wootan. The lawmen rode up into the mountains to arrest John and Tom Power for failing to register for the selective draft.

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