William J. Oliver

1908 Republican state convention

Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, Tennessee's Republican Party was bitterly divided between two factions: one led by ex-Congressman Henry Clay Evans, and the other led by 1st district Congressman Walter P. Brownlow. Oliver, like most Knoxville businessmen, supported Brownlow. The Brownlow faction controlled the party until 1904, when Evans ally Nathan W. Hale defeated Brownlow's lieutenant Richard W. Austin for the 2nd district congressional seat, and Evans' associates gained control of the Republican state committee.

As the 1908 campaign season opened, the Brownlow faction wanted Tennessee's seat on the Republican National Committee to go to Oliver, while Evans wanted it to go to Hale. The Evans faction dominated Republican county conventions that year, winning most of the delegates to the party's March 1908 state convention in Nashville. With Brownlow ill and Austin out of the country, a frustrated Oliver decided to take matters into his own hands. He recruited around 800 Knoxville-area ruffians, armed them with pistols and hatchets, and transported them via train to Nashville. The mob burst into the Tennessee State Capitol several hours before the convention was scheduled to begin, overpowered the guards, and promptly opened the convention proceedings. After Oliver delivered a "red-hot speech" trashing Evans and Hale, he was "elected" national committeeman, and his associates were chosen as delegates to the 1908 Republican National Convention.

The Evans faction, led by Evans' chief ally (and future U.S. Senator) Newell Sanders, arrived at the capitol at the hour the convention was scheduled to begin. Finding Oliver's men in control of the proceedings, a "battle royal" ensued, with delegates exchanging punches and throwing chairs and other stray objects at one another.

Seeing the benefits that large-scale expositions had brought to other cities, Oliver teamed up with journalist William Goodman, who had been using his position as secretary of the Knoxville Commercial Club to try and organize such a grand exposition in Knoxville since 1900. After a massive publicity campaign, the Commercial Club finally embraced the idea in 1908. The club organized the Appalachian Exposition Company, and appointed Oliver president. The company raised $100,000 for the venture.

During World War I, Oliver's Knoxville factory manufactured artillery shells.

In 1916, the International Association of Machinists attempted to unionize Oliver's factory in Knoxville, leading to a lockout. In July of that year, labor activist Joseph Gilmour organized a rally at the factory. According to a report issued by Gilmour, he was met at the rally by Oliver and about fifty "strike-breaking thugs and officials." Gilmour stated that as he tried to speak, Oliver's men blasted him with a fire hose, and afterward attacked him and knocked him unconscious.

In October 1918, federal authorities seized Oliver's factory, and he and nine subordinates were arrested and charged with sabotage, fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the government for manufacturing defective artillery shells. Though the charges were later dismissed, Oliver's company was forced into bankruptcy, and he never recovered financially.

In 1920, Oliver was badly injured when he was hit by a truck near his home on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, and never fully recovered. He died at his home on March 28, 1925. He was buried in the city's Greenwood Cemetery.