The Battle of Athens, Tennessee 1946 - Fighting for Liberty, Restoring the Rule of Law

[littlefieldjohn]

The Battle of Athens
At end-1945, some 3,000 battle-hardened veterans returned to McMinn County

The Lessons of Athens
Those who took up arms in Athens, Tennessee:

■wanted honest elections, a cornerstone of our Constitutional order;
■had repeatedly tried to get Federal or State election monitors;
■used armed force so as to minimize harm to the law-breakers;
■showed little malice to the defeated law-breakers;
■restored lawful government.
The Battle of Athens clearly shows:

■how Americans can and should lawfully use armed force;
■why the Rule of Law requires unrestricted access to firearms;
■how civilians with military-type firearms can beat the forces of “law and order”.
Dictators believe that public order is more important than the Rule of Law. However, Americans reject this idea. Criminals can exploit for selfish ends, the use armed force to restore the Rule of Law. But brutal political repression – as practiced by Cantrell and Mansfield – is lethal to many. An individual criminal can harm a handful of people. Governments alone can brutalize thousands, or millions.

“Gun control” clears the way for genocide by giving governments “gone bad” far greater freedom to commit mass murder.

Law-abiding McMinn Countians won the Battle of Athens because they were not hamstrung by “gun control”. McMinn Countians showed us when citizens can and should use armed force to support the Rule of Law. We are all in their debt.

This is a bare bones summary of a major report in JPFO’s Firearms Sentinel (January 1995).
http://www.federaljack.com/?p=173883

[SmokyMtn]

There was a made for TV movie back in the 1990s on The Battle of Athens

Voter Fraud : The Battle Of Athens,Tennessee 1946 : A True Story - YouTube

Voter Fraud : The Battle Of Athens,Tennessee 1946 : A True Story - YouTube

[Thomas de Aynesworth]

Put your head down, amigo.

You Americans really lap this shit up, don't you?

The clip had armed niggers and everything.

[SmokyMtn]

The Shooting of Tom Gillespie

Precinct 11, Athens Water Company Building

2:45 pm

Tom Gillespie, a [black] farmer came into the Athens Water Company building, which was serving as the 11th Precinct, to vote. It is not clear which of Cantrell's men positioned himself behind Gillespie to observe his vote but when he was observed to be preparing to vote "the wrong way" the Cantrell man told Gillespie, "You'll have to get out of here. You're voting in the wrong precinct."

3:00 pm

Gillespie protested to Deputy Windy Wise, "I've always voted here before."

For this monumental impertinence, Wise slugged Gillespie with brass knuckles and shot him with what was said to be a U.S. Army .45 as he stumbled out the door. Gillespie suffered a flesh wound in the small of the back and was taken off by deputy sheriffs for what they said would be treatment.

Just to show that the racial question didn't enter into this travesty-on-an-election, the gold starred deputies directed their attention to the GI election clerks and women who were witnessing the count.

Apparently, their presence was embarrassing to the professional election thieves. Election Judge (and deputy sheriff) Karl Neil, pistol on hip, ordered Mrs H. A. Vestal and five other women to leave the polls. "Get out!" said Neil.

The women stood their ground. "We have a right to watch you count the ballots," one said.

Go on, get out of here!" shouted Neil, and the women filed out, protesting.

This wasn't enough. Four GI's remained to keep the ballot thieves in line. They were James Edward Vestal (Mrs. Vestal's son), Charles Scott, Jr., Charley Hyde, and J. P. Cartwright.

The [Cantrell] machine had six of its bigger bicep boys there, three wearing sidearms. Deputy Neil then ordered Cartwright and Hyde to "go up in the front and sit down." They said they couldn't see the count from there. "Go on up front and sit down, you don't have to see us count 'em." snarled a muscular thug.

Cartwright said he wouldn't stay if he couldn't witness the count, so he and Hyde left. This left Vestal and Scott as the only GI watchers for Precinct 11.

When Cartwright and Hyde emerged, a roar of anger went up from the hundreds of citizens across the street. The eight or nine deputies in front of the waterworks office fingered their weapons. Charles Scott, Sr. sent word in to his son and Vestal to "come on out. We don't want you boys alone in there with those gangsters."

GI Judge Bob Hairrell Beaten 3:15 pm

Bob Hairrell, GI judge, beaten by Minis Wilburn, officer of the election, 12 precinct, North White Street, Athens.

The First Poll Closing (Illegally)

http://constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen_press.htm

[SmokyMtn]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2662004/posts
The Cantrell forces had calculated that if they could control the first, eleventh and twelfth precincts in Athens and the one in Etowah, the election was theirs. The ballot boxes from the Water Works (the eleventh) and the Dixie Cafe (the twelfth) were safely in the jail. The voting place for the first precinct, the courthouse, was barricaded by deputies who held four GIs hostage, and Paul Cantrell himself had Etowah under control.

By 6:00 P.M. it seemed to be over. GI headquarters was deserted, and unhappy crowds moved quietly along the streets. Another election had been stolen, and nothing could be done about it.

At the Strand Movie Theater across from the courthouse, the marquee read: “Coming Soon: Gunning for Vengeance.”

Bill White, who had fought in the Pacific while still in his teens and come home an ex-sergeant, had gotten angrier as the day wore on. At two in the afternoon he had harangued the group of veterans in the Essankay, saying: “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…”

In the early evening White went to get the guns himself. He sent two GIs to get a truck and, with a few other veterans, perhaps a dozen, he headed for the National Guard armory. There, he said in a 1969 interview, he “broke down the armory doors and took all the rifles, two Thompson sub-machine guns, and all the ammunition we could carry, loaded it up in the two-ton truck and went back to GI headquarters and passed out seventy high-powered rifles and two bandoleers of ammunition with each one.” By 9:00 P.M. Paul Cantrell, Pat Mansfield, State Rep. George Woods, who was also a member of the election commission, and about fifty deputies were locked inside the jail and going through the ballot boxes. The presence of Mansfield and Woods meant that a majority of the election commission was on hand, so the tallies could be certified and validated on the spot. More deputies were still barricaded in the courthouse, but along the streets none were to be seen. If the Cantrell forces had been a bit more wary, they might have spotted some shadows slipping up the embankment directly across the street from the jail.

Opinion differs on exactly how the challenge was issued. White says he was the one to call it out: “Would you damn bastards bring those damn ballot boxes out here or we are going to set siege against the jail and blow it down!” Moments later the night exploded in automatic weapons fire punctuated by shotgun blasts. “I fired the first shot,” White claimed, “then everybody started shooting from our side.” A deputy ran for the jail. “I shot him; he wheeled and fell inside of the jail.” Bullets ricocheted up and down White Street. “I shot a second man; his leg flew out from under him, and he crawled under a car.” The veterans bombarded the jail for hours, but Cantrell and his accomplices, secure behind the red-brick walls, refused to surrender. As the uncertain battle dragged past midnight, the GIs began to have some uneasy second thoughts. They knew that they had violated local, state, and federal laws that night, and if Cantrell was not routed before his rescuers arrived, they might spend the rest of their lives in prison. Rumors compounded their fears: “The National Guard is on the way!” “The state troopers are here!” “Birch Biggs and his gang are coming!” (Biggs ran Polk County more ruthlessly than Cantrell ran McMinn.)

If the veterans had known the truth, they would have been less apprehensive. George Woods had telephoned Biggs earlier that night for help. Biggs was not there, but his son, Broughton, took the call. His answer: “Do you think I’m crazy?” Woods then slipped out of town.

The veterans were eager to end the battle. Some of them made Molotov cocktails, others went to the county supply house for dynamite. The gasoline bombs proved ineffective, but at 2:30 A.M. the dynamite arrived. At about this time an ambulance pulled around to the north side of the jail. Assuming it was for the evacuation of the wounded, the veterans let it pass. Two men jumped in, but then, instead of returning to the hospital, the ambulance sped north out of town. The men were Paul Cantrell and Pat Mansfield.

At 2:48 A.M. the first dynamite was tossed toward the jail; it landed under Boe Dunn’s cruiser, and the explosion flipped the vehicle over on its top, leaving its wheels spinning. Three more bundles of dynamite were thrown almost simultaneously; one landed on the jail porch roof, another under Mansfield’s car, and the third struck the jail wall. The explosions rattled windows throughout the town; leaves fell from the trees, debris scattered for blocks, and the jailhouse porch jumped off its foundation. The deputies barricaded in the courthouse a block away rushed onto the balcony, eager to surrender. The jail’s defenders staggered from their ruined stronghold and handed the ballot boxes over to the veterans.

With the Cantrell forces conquered, ten years of suppressed rage exploded. The townspeople set upon the captured deputies and, but for the GIs, probably would have killed them all. Minus Wilburn, a particularly unpopular deputy, had his throat slashed; Biscuit Farris, Cantrell’s prison superintendent, had his jaw shattered by a bullet; and Windy Wise was kicked and beaten senseless. Joined by a number of their fellows, the GIs cleared the jail of the rioters and locked up their prisoners for the night.

At dawn the veterans slipped from the jail, made their way through the detritus of the battle, and dispersed into what they hoped would be anonymity. Miraculously there had been no deaths. But on August 2 a page-one headline in The New York Times wrongly trumpeted the news: TENNESSEE SHERIFF is SLAIN IN PRIMARY DAY VIOLENCE. All day long reporters with cameras and notebooks poured into town to photograph, question, analyze, and write. And every newcomer passed the sign on Highway 11:

WELCOME TO ATHENS “The Friendly City”