Siteadmin, Check users, Administrators
12,071
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 71:
Line 71: − + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
no edit summary
A crowd immediately gathered in front of the Water Works. Pat Mansfield and several deputies loaded Gillespie into Mansfield’s police cruiser and took him to the jail.
A crowd immediately gathered in front of the Water Works. Pat Mansfield and several deputies loaded Gillespie into Mansfield’s police cruiser and took him to the jail.
Inside the Water Works, Deputy Karl Neil drew his sidearm and ordered five female poll waters, including Mrs. H. A. Vestal, to leave. They did, under protest. Four GI’s remained to watch the ongoing ballot count: James Edward Vestal (Mrs. Vestal’s son), Charles Scott, Jr., Charles Hyde, and J. P. Cartwright. Neil ordered Hyde and Cartwright to “go up front
Inside the Water Works, Deputy Karl Neil drew his sidearm and ordered five female poll waters, including Mrs. H. A. Vestal, to leave. They did, under protest. Four GI’s remained to watch the ongoing ballot count: James Edward Vestal (Mrs. Vestal’s son), Charles Scott, Jr., Charles Hyde, and J. P. Cartwright. Neil ordered Hyde and Cartwright to “go up front and sit down,” so they couldn’t see the count. Hyde and Cartwright left the building. Charles Scott, Sr. sent word in to his son and to Ed Vestal: get out for your own safety. Vestal and the younger Scott stayed.
* 3:15 p.m.: Minis Wilburn, an “officer of the election” at Precinct 12 (Dixie Cafe, North White Street), beat GI Election Judge Bob Hairrell. This happened after Hairrell witnessed several voting irregularities, including letting minors vote, and paying cash for votes in full view.
* 3:55 p.m.: Mansfield and his deputies closed Precinct 12 five minutes early. They lifted a car and set it down in front of the door and also blocked the nearby alley with two other cars.
== The skirmish at the Water Works ==
At 4:15 p.m., the sheriff and about twelve deputies arrived at the Water Works precinct to keep everyone away. Inside, Windy Wise ordered Vestal and Scott to sit away from the ballot-count operation, but not to leave the building. In fact the deputies barricaded Vestal and Scott behind a counter and locked the door. The door was a plate-glass door set in a wooden frame. Vestal and Scott actually broke through this, shoved their way past Windy Wise and his men, and made it outside. Hands high, with Wise’s gun trained on them, they walked across the street and gained the safety of the crowd. They could do this because the crowd were angry and Wise, Neil, and company could not know whether they were armed or not. Furthermore, two newspaper reporters were present, and even Windy Wise would not shoot unarmed men in front of them.
At 4:55 p.m., Chief Deputy Boe Dunn arrived at the Water Works, with two hostages in tow: Felix Harrod and Tom Dooley. Dunn himself appropriated the ballot box and loaded it into his car to take it to the jail. Fifteen deputies aimed their service guns at the crowd as they left.
== Prepare for battle ==
At 5:10 p.m. the G.I.’s gathered at the Essankay Garage. In addition to scouring the county for privately held firearms, they unlocked the State Guard armory. There they acquired three M-1 rifles, five .45 semi-automatic pistols, and 24 British Enfield rifles.
Deputy Dunn made the serious tactical mistake of sending two deputies to the Essankay to arrest the GI’s. When they drew their weapons, the GI’s rushed out of the garage, tackled them, and dragged them inside. There they disarmed them and stripped off their clothes. Two more deputies who tried to reinforce the pair suffered similar capture. Three more deputies came, and the GI’s captured them, too. At 5:30 p.m. some citizen volunteers transported the seven deputies out of the town.
At 6:35 p.m., the sheriff’s men carried the Precinct 12 ballot box into the jail. They already had the Precinct 11 ballot box there, along with several GI’s (including Walter Ellis; see above) whom they held incommunicado and without formal charges.
Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m., at least five hundred GI’s, all armed, took up station around the jail and on the rooftops of nearby buildings, including the Athens Power Plant. They left one door, at the rear, unguarded, so that those inside could escape with their lives any time they so chose.
Inside, Paul Cantrell, Pat Mansfield, State Rep. Woods, and fifty deputies started “going through the ballot boxes.” Judge Green’s account describes what the GI’s would find later: bunches of blank ballots, and various signs of preparation to burn ballots. These findings alone suggest an attempt to issue a rigged election count.
= The battle starts =
At about 9:00 p.m., Bill White issued an ultimatum: surrender the ballot boxes, or suffer siege and attack. White confessed later that he fired the shot that started the battle. But the Mobile Federalist Society tells a different account. According to it, Mansfield’s deputies fired first. Three GI’s, trying to warn passers-by of the danger, suffered wounds.
Firing waxed and waned for two hours. During this time, George Woods tried to summon aid from Birch Biggs of Polk County. Biggs ran a machine even more brutal than Cantrell’s. But Biggs would not intervene. Broughton Biggs, Birch’s son, by one account yelled at Woods, “Do you think I’m crazy?” Woods, bearing the sting of that rebuff, slunk out of town.
Mansfield and Cantrell tried to get Governor McCord to mobilize the Tennessee National Guard. Whether McCord issued that order or not, accounts differ. But all agree that the Guard did not engage the veterans. The commandant of the Guard doubtless knew that the sympathies of his force would lie with the ex-GI’s. Why? Because these Guardsmen were ex-GI’s themselves.
The besiegers did not and could not know this, of course. Worse, they had no radios and thus could not co-ordinate their fire. The brick walls of the jail withstood the fusillade. And as any soldier knows, until the enemy surrenders, the battle, and the war, continues.
As the siege dragged on, several soldiers made Molotov cocktails and threw them. These proved ineffective. But at 2:30 a.m., the veterans acquired dynamite. At this time, an ambulance made its way to the jail. The veterans let it pass, thinking it had come to evacuate the wounded. Instead it evacuated Paul Cantrell and Pat Mansfield. ''They had just abandoned their command.''
= The battle ends =
At 2:48 a.m., the besiegers threw their dynamite, in sticks with lit fuses. One charge flipped Deputy Dunn’s car over. Another rocked the jailhouse porch on its foundation. A third flipped Pat Mansfield’s car (but of course, Mansfield had abandoned it with his command). A fourth damaged the jailhouse wall.
After that, the deputies, their commanding officers having deserted them, and facing obviously superior forces, surrendered.
The veterans took possession of the ballot boxes. They later certified that the Veterans’ Party had won all five races by 2 to 1 margins.
The townspeople vented their rage on the defeated Cantrell forces. One townsman, whose name appears on no record, slashed Wilburn’s throat. (He would recover—barely.) Anther townsman shot Biscuit Farris, the jail superintendent, in the jaw, shattering it. Several townsmen kicked and beat Windy Wise to unconsciousness. But the GI’s took command of the situation, sent the rioters home, and locked their prisoners in the jail overnight.
= Overwrought reporting =
In a classic example of “[[fake news]],” ''The New York Times'' actually reported that the GI’s, or their sympathizers, had ''slain'' Sheriff Mansfield. Recall that in fact Mansfield and Cantrell had fled during the battle. In fact, the battle concluded with not a single fatality. (A report by one source, that Tom Gillespie had died of his wound, has no corroboration.)
Knox Henry won election as sheriff. Pat Mansfield resigned his office on 4 August, effective immediately. Knox Henry took his place at once.
In the first days that followed, tensions ran high. The veterans feared a counterattack by forces owned by or loyal to Cantrell. No such attack ever came. They also governed as a vigilance committee to keep rioting and looting from breaking out. That ended with the recognition of Knox Henry as the new sheriff.
The “Boss Crump Machine” suffered blow after blow in the weeks that followed. A new Governor (Gordon Browning) and U.S. Senator (Estes Kefauver) won election that year.<ref name=Kefauver>The federal government remembers the name of Estes Kefauver to this day, having added his name to the Nashville Federal Building.</ref>
The “fake news” narrative of “lawlessness” by the veterans continued for a full year. In fact, no veteran was ever prosecuted. Windy Wise was sentenced to one to three years for shooting Gillespie.
Sadly, no current resident of Athens, Tennessee, remembers the events of that day. A single plaque commemorates the event. But not a single original structure remains.
= Film adaptation =
In 1992, the Hallmark Hall of Fame released ''An American Story'', a fictionalized account of the Battle of Athens.<ref name=Hallmark>''An American Story.'' Directed by John Gray. With Brad Johnson, Kathleen Quinlan, Tom Sizemore, et al. Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions, 1992. <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103673/></ref> This project changes most of the names of the characters. It also changes key details of the election and the battle that followed:
# The shooting occurs at a Post Office precinct. The sheriff closes the polls early, an armed GI election judge objects, and a deputy calmly shoots the GI in the right flank. The deputies then remove two ballot boxes from that precinct.
# The chief veteran challenger is running for mayor, not sheriff.
# The first shot at the jail rings out when a deputy leans out of a window and harangues the besiegers. One besieger breaks discipline and fires a shot without orders.
# The veterans manage to get close enough to leave a demolition charge with wires and a detonator.
None of these things occurred as the movie depicts, of course. Nor does the movie depict any of the violent acts on the part of deputies. Perhaps the producers told this tame version of events to avoid lawsuits by any surviving members of the Cantrell, Mansfield, or Woods families.
Hallmark Media did not re-release An American Story. But an organization called the American Movement uploaded the full movie to YouTube.<ref name=YouTube>Viewers can view it here. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c-Dsg4X4Dk></ref>
= Literary parallel =
The only literary parallel to this event, and even this is far from exact, is Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (1959). Heinlein predicts a future in which humanity fights a third world war between a Chinese-dominated axis on one side, and an alliance among Russia, the United Kingdom, and America on the other. At the end of this war comes not mere depression but total social collapse.
Into this obvious power vacuum, step returning veterans from the war. In city after city they set up vigilance committees to stem the rioting and looting they find. They sometimes must hang fellow veterans for taking part in the looting. In the face of that, they refuse to let anyone except returnees serve on their vigilance committees.
Just arbitrary at first. They trusted each other—a bit. They didn’t trust anyone else.
[We’re] not about to let any bleeding, profiteering, black market, double-time-for-overtime, Army-dodging, [unprintable] civilians have any say about it! They’ll do as they’re told, see? While us apes straighten things out!
The behavior of Knox Henry and his fellow returnees in the power vacuum that followed their victory over the Cantrells, closely mirrors this attitude. This suggests that, had law and order collapsed totally, they might have acted similarly.
Heinlein never once alludes to the Battle of Athens. But the results of his writing are about the same as though he had researched it himself.
= References =
{reflist}
[[Category:Second Amendment]]
[[Category:Tennessee]]
[[Category:United States History]]