Battle of the Ballots

The restless crowd in the public square, the campaign posters on the courthouse maples and the granite-faced strangers swaggering in the streets of Athens, Tenn. (pop. 11,000) were all familiar portents. Election day was upon the "Friendly City."

A sharp sun drove a few voters to the shady courthouse lawn and its weathered wooden bench inscribed "Compliments of Paul Cantrell." But Sheriff Pat Mansfield, with a gold-plated badge glittering on his sports shirt, looked coolly confident in a knot of armed deputies. This was the day that Sheriff Mansfield and State Senator Cantrell, the iron-fisted bosses of McMinn County, had arranged to trade offices.

But as soon as the polls were opened it appeared that the arrangement might strike a snag. Poll watchers from the upstart G.I. Nonpartisan Ticket were embarrassingly overzealous. Sheriff Mansfield's deputies felt compelled to bundle one young watcher off to jail. When a Negro farmer turned up to vote in Precinct 11, an annoyed deputy shot him in the back. At the cramped polling place in the rear of the Dixie Cafe, khaki-shirted veterans could not seem to crowd their way up to the ballot box.

"Here It Comes." By afternoon the suggestions of hard feelings were growing firm. Half a dozen of Mansfield's deputies were beaten and carried out of town. When the polls closed at 4, a tense throng milled outside the voting place in the office of the Athens Water Co. to await the count. Suddenly two G.I. watchers burst through the shattering plate glass door, closely followed by a deputy wildly waving a pistol. A woman in the crowd screamed: "Oh God, here it comes."

Two carloads of deputies screeched to the curb. Holding back the crowd at pistol point, they threw the ballot box into one of the cars and carried it off to the jail for their own brand of safe counting.

When night fell rifles passed through the hands of muttering veterans rallying in front of G.I. election headquarters. A block away a movie marquee blazed its attraction: Gunning for Vengeance. Shadowy figures soon lurked along the ivy-covered ridge overlooking the two-story brick jail. A pale yellow light gleamed through the jail's tall front windows; the deputies were inside. Outside, the street was solidly lined with deputies' cars.

A black-haired veteran walked up to the jail front, and shouted: "We want the ballot boxes back where they belong or we'll open up on you."

From the jail came a single shot. From the ridge rang a deafening volley. From everywhere all hell broke loose in the Friendly City.

"Let Us Give Up." Flames burst from an auto parked in no-man's land. A woman screamed from an apartment next the jail, begging for safe conduct through the erratic cross fire. An ambulance seeking to rescue the wounded inside the jail hastily retired before sniper bullets from the trees. For six hours the night echoed with the unequal exchanges between 73 deputies and their besiegers, now swollen to hundreds of shouting, wild-firing volunteers. Once, the barricaded deputies called out a threat to kill three G.I. hostages, jailed during the day, unless the assault ceased.

Toward dawn a thundering explosion rocked the bullet-riddled jail front. A dynamite charge had ripped away the porch, and behind the billowing cloud of smoke and rubble the sporadic firing ceased. From within a voice called: "Stop it. You're killing us. Let us give up."

Leaving their wounded bleeding on the floor inside, the defeated garrison of Cantrell-Mansfield followers filed out, hands high in the air. Under a glaring spotlight beamed on the damaged entrance, the onetime law of McMinn County squinted wearily at a jeering, taunting mob.

At week's end McMinn County Politicos Paul Cantrell and Pat Mansfield, whose Democratic machine had bullied the fertile East Tennessee valley for ten years, were still absent and in hiding. The entire G.I. Nonpartisan ticket (including two Republicans) had been declared elected. The new Sheriff will be Knox Henry, 34, filling-station owner and an overseas Air Corps sergeant.

In Athens' white, gingerbread courthouse a public mass meeting chose a minister and two businessmen to run governmentless McMinn County until the G.I.s could take over. Shootings and car-wreckings by armed bands of vigilantes continued. Big-jawed, towering Jim Buttram, twice-wounded corporal with the Ninth Division and manager of the G.I. Ticket, promised "to help maintain order."

McMinn County's shooting veterans had spectacularly rid themselves of one type of tyranny. But thoughtful citizens knew they had set an ominous precedent. Abraham Lincoln had made the point:

"Among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and. . . they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost."

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