Athens, TN is the county seat of McMinn county. Located in eastern Tennessee about halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville, in 1946 it was the center of a civil uprising that is not only worth learning about, but learning from as well.In the 1930’s political machines ran the parties, more or less the way they do today. In 1936 Paul Cantrell was elected Sheriff in what many in Athens believe to this day was a fraudulent election. Those who questioned the character of the man who became Sheriff would find their fears vindicated.
At that time the Sheriff and his deputies were not paid a salary. Rather, they received fees for every person booked, incarcerated, and released. All that was needed to collect their fee was a voucher signed by the Sheriff. As you might imagine, this type of system led to a lot of arrests.
Deputies routinely boarded buses passing through and dragged sleepy-eyed passengers to the jail to pay their $16.50 fine for drunkenness, whether they were guilty or not. Arrests ran as high as 115 per weekend. The fee system was profitable, but record-keeping was required, and the money could be traced. It was less troublesome to collect kickbacks for allowing roadhouses to operate openly. Cooperative owners would point out influential patrons. They were not bothered, but the rest were subject to shakedowns. Prostitution, liquor, and gambling grew so prevalent that it became common knowledge in Tennessee that Athens was “wide open.”
The Battle of Athens, American Heritage Magazine, Volume 36, Issue 2
In early 1941 a law was passed reducing the number of voting precincts in McMinn county from 23 to 12 and the number of justices of the peace from 14 to 7. Four of the remaining justices were openly supportive of Sheriff Cantrell, thus consolidating his power. Department Of Justice investigations into election fraud in McMinn county in 1940, 1942, and 1944 were never resolved.
In 1945 and 1946 thousands of GIs were returning home from the war and did not like what they saw. They were being stopped by law enforcement and fined, usually quite heavily, for just about anything. After years of serving their country and protecting liberty, they wanted to be left alone, but the more the veterans were arrested and beat up, the madder they got. They decided to use the liberties they had fought for and give people the opportunity to vote for a better class of candidate, so they met secretly and formed their own slate. While the veterans fielded five candidates, all eyes were on the race for Sheriff between Knox Henry for the veterans and Paul Cantrell for the Democrats.
Since 1936, Mr. Cantrell had gone on to serve as a state senator. During his stint in Nashville, Pat Mansfield was elected Sheriff, and now they were running to swap seats, with Mansfield running for state senator and Cantrell running for Sheriff.
As the election approached there were a few signs of what was to come, and many in Athens expected something would happen. On July 30th, two deputies were caught with what they described as “election whiskey”. Cantrell had accused the veterans of printing sample ballots in order to stuff ballot boxes while the veterans blared their slogan from loudspeakers on moving cars, “Your vote will be counted as cast.” Two days before the election advertisements from the two parties appeared in the local paper, the Post-Athenian. The first was from the veterans:
“These young men fought and won a war for good government. They know what it takes and what it means to have a clean government—and they are energetic enough, honest enough and intelligent enough to give us good, clean government.”
The Battle of Athens, American Heritage Magazine, Volume 36, Issue 2
A few pages later the Democratic party said:
“Look at the facts—and you will vote for the Democratic ticket. The campaign fight is as old as the hills—it is the story of the outs wanting back in.”
The Battle of Athens, American Heritage Magazine, Volume 36, Issue 2
The day before the election, VFW members from neighboring Blount County offered to help watch the polls. Meanwhile Sheriff Mansfield, reacting to claims that certain elements planned to make a disturbance, hired hundreds of deputies from outside the county, and even outside the state, to protect the polls. The veterans’ campaign manager, Jim Buttram, had sent telegrams to Tennessee Governor Jim McCord and U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark asking for assistance in ensuring a fair election. Neither man responded. The stage was set for an election none of us should ever forget.
Trouble began early on Election Day, August 1, 1946, amidst the largest voter turnout in local history. At 9:30 AM, Walter Ellis, a legally appointed representative for the veterans, was arrested for protesting voting irregularities. More than 200 veterans gathered in L.L. Shaefer’s Jewelry store, which served as the office of their campaign manager, Jim Buttram. They knew they were in trouble, violence had already started, and Sheriff Mansfield had posted armed deputies around each of the polling places, presumably preparing for the 4 PM closing of the polls and the moving of the ballot boxes to the jail for counting. After a short meeting it was agreed that those who did not have weapons should get them and return to their rally point, Essankay’s Garage, across the street from Mr. Buttram’s campaign office. By 3:00 PM most of the veterans had assembled at Essankay’s Garage, and most of them were armed and ready for things to get worse.
At about the same time, an elderly black farmer by the name of Tom Gillespie stepped into the 11th precinct polling place to cast his ballot, where he was confronted by Windy Wise, a Cantrell guard. Wise told Gillespie, “Nigger, you can’t vote here.” When Gillespie protested, Wise responded by hitting him with a set of brass knuckles. While Gillespie was running for the door, Wise shot him in the back. The shot drew a crowd, including Sheriff Mansfield, who ordered the polling place closed, left four deputies to guard it, and took Mr. Gillespie to jail. During the confusion, two poll watchers for the veterans, Ed Vestal and Charles Scott, were seized and held hostage inside the polling place by Wise and another deputy, Karl Neil. As the crowd outside taunted the deputies, Vestal and Scott were able to escape by going through a plate glass window and running for safety into the crowd. Deputy Wise stepped through the broken window waving his pistol, which led several unarmed veterans to decide to head back to the garage and “get their guns”.
While the ballot box was taken to a Sheriff’s cruiser, deputy Wise informed Chief Deputy Dunn of the threat from the veterans. Chief Deputy Dunn ordered two deputies to the veterans’ headquarters, to arrest the men Wise could identify and the ballot box was taken to the jail under armed guard. When the two deputies arrived at the veterans’ headquarters, they were quickly disarmed and detained. Two deputies sent as reinforcements met with the same fate. Finally a group of three deputies approached with pistols drawn, only to be beaten and detained as well. A crowd had formed outside the veterans’ headquarters, demanding the lives of the prisoners. While some of the veterans agreed, some of them left, along with some in the crowd who did not want to be a part of it. Finally, the deputies were taken to the woods, beaten, and shackled to trees.
At the 12th precinct, poll watchers for the veterans, Bob Hairrell and Leslie Dooley, had observed numerous acts of fraud by Cantrell poll watcher Minus Wilburn. They had observed Wilburn allowing minors to vote and handing cash to adult voters. Finally, at 3:45 PM, when Wilson attempted to allow a young woman without a poll tax receipt to vote, Hairrell interceded, grabbing Wilburn’s wrist before he could deposit the ballot into the box, and received a slap to the head with a blackjack and a kick in the face in response. Wilburn then ordered the precinct closed and the ballot box taken to the jail under armed guard. Shortly after the polls closed at 4 PM it looked like another election had been stolen and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
However, earlier in the afternoon Bill White, a veteran of the war in the Pacific, was getting angrier and angrier. He told the veterans, “You call yourselves GIs—you go over there and fight for three and four years—you come back and you let a bunch of draft dodgers who stayed here where it was safe, and you were making it safe for them, push you around. … If you people don’t stop this, and now is the time and place, you people wouldn’t make a pimple on a fighting GI’s ass. Get guns…” After that several veterans broke into the National Guard armory, grabbed arms and ammunition, and distributed them to other veterans.
By 9:00 PM, Cantrell, Mansfield, and state rep George Woods were locked inside the jail, guarded by 50 deputies and counting ballots. Mansfield and Woods were both on the county election commission and represented a majority, so they could certify the election results themselves. While opinions differ on the details, the veterans surrounded the jail and demanded that those inside come out with the ballots, or they would come in after them. A significant firefight broke out with automatic weapons and shotgun fire, and at least two deputies were injured. Since those in the jail were safe behind brick walls, the firefight went on for hours. With rumors of reinforcements coming to support Cantrell, the veterans grew more and more concerned. They had broken state, local, and federal laws, and if they could not gain access to the jail and prove the fraud before help arrived, they were looking at spending the rest of their lives in jail. The veterans tried Molotov cocktails, but they were ineffective as they could not get them close enough to the jail. Finally, at 2:30 AM veterans showed up with dynamite. About that time an ambulance also showed up and the veterans let it through, assuming it was there to evacuate the wounded. Instead, Cantrell and Mansfield jumped in, and the ambulance sped out of town. Around 2:48 AM the veterans threw dynamite at the jail, and by 3:30 AM the deputies still inside the jail surrendered. Bill White reported finding tally sheets scored 15 to 1 for Paul Cantrell. In an ironic twist, the veterans who had been battling the deputies now had to guard them from the townsfolk the deputies had been terrorizing for years. One deputy had his throat slashed, one was shot, and another beaten, but there were no fatalities.
After the election, with a power vacuum in the county, armed GIs patrolled the streets. There were rumors that Mansfield was planning an invasion to reclaim Athens, but it was an invasion which never happened. On August 4th, Pat Mansfield telegraphed the Governor his resignation and requested Knox Henry fill his remaining term. The next day, State Rep. George Woods returned to Athens to certify the election, and Knox Henry was elected Sheriff by a vote of 2175 to 1270. On August 11th, the five veterans elected to office announced they would return to the county all fees collected in excess of $5,000. In the aftermath only one man had charges filed against him, when Windy Wise was sentenced to 1-3 years for shooting Tom Gillespie in the back.
While the national press often misreported the events of August 1946 (some going so far as to claim the Sheriff was killed), after the night of violence and subsequent shakeup in county politics, things in Athens quickly returned to normal. While the act of taking up arms, regardless of how corrupt the politics, was routinely chastised, compared to vigilantism, or a revolution that could tear apart the nation if replicated elsewhere, the calm after the storm soon showed the error of such predictions. Knox Henry served two terms as Sheriff, while Paul Cantrell eventually returned to McMinn country, running a bank with his brothers. Pat Mansfield secretly resigned his position on the election committee on August 8, 1946. He also had what was described as cordial meeting with one of the advisers to the veterans.
Conclusion
So what can we learn from this event in history? I believe there are several things. First, political corruption is nothing new. Like an infection or disease, letting it fester corrupts not only those in politics but everything around it. I don’t know which is sadder: That men who fought for our freedom overseas also had to fight in American streets for those same freedoms? Or that Americans let the situation get so bad in the first place? I’ve talked to many people who see the corruption and do nothing because they don’t see things getting better. Too often they forget that not seeing things get better is not an excuse for letting things get worse. Was Jim Buttram the only person who reached out to state and federal officials to help insure a fair election? What happened with the DOJ investigations in 1940, 1942, and 1944?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke
Second, we see the real reason for the 2nd Amendment. It’s not about hunting or even about personal defense, it’s about giving the people a way to insure their own freedom from an oppressive government. Sometimes an armed populace is the only defense against a corrupt government, whether that government be from their own county, Washington D.C. , or overseas.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
U.S. Constitution, Second Amendment
Lastly, it shows what I have been talking about since I started the Constitution Study. When faced with an ever more corrupt and lawless government we have only two choices: Submit or fight. The GIs in Athens wanted to fight at the ballot box, but since the situation had gone too far, their only choice was to fight with arms or surrender to the corruption. America is fast approaching the situation where elections matter little, if at all. It seems we no longer vote based on a someone’s willingness to uphold the Constitution, but only on their promises to give us stuff. It seems the rule of law means less and less every day, and the vast majority of Americans either do not know or just don’t care. As Edmund Burke also said:
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
America, are we dooming ourselves to repeat the history of the Battle of Athens? Are we willing to doom our children and grandchildren into making the same choice the veterans in Athens did in 1946? Have we even bothered to teach them what the men and women in World War II were fighting for? Or are we condemning them to be treated like Walter Ellis, Tom Gillespie, Ed Vestal, Charles Scott, and Bob Hairrell?
I believe we still have time to win via the ballot box. My question to you is: Will we rise up in time?
