Peabody's role in helping mine owners crush the strike at Cripple Creek and, ultimately, the union itself, is particularly ugly. The miners had conducted a nonviolent strike nine years earlier and their policy was one of nonviolence. But when Peabody, a banker, was elected governor of Colorado, Cripple Creek mine owners felt they had an ally and they could provoke the miners with impunity. The mine owners cut back hard-earned benefits and it was those cutbacks that caused the strike of 1903–04. In response to the strike, Peabody sent in The Colorado National Guard which broke into miner's homes, harassed their wives and children, and forcefully deported union men out of Cripple Creek. Peabody's militia arrested and jailed miners against whom there were no charges, often removing them from their homes. When judicial authorities objected to this illegal treatment Peabody tried to suspend the writ of habeas corpus that was being used to protect illegally-arrested miners. When miners resisted military violence, Peabody responded with martial law. His troops destroyed the offices of the press and assumed military command of Cripple Creek until both the strike and the union had been destroyed.