http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2012/05/03/the-battle-of-athens-tennessee/

 

Alexander's Essay – May 3, 2012

The Battle of Athens (Tennessee)

A Case Study in Grassroots Restoration of the Rule of Law

"The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." -- James Madison (1788)
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Vets firing on McMinn Jail

As a direct descendent of Tennessee Patriots who were veterans of every major conflict in defense of American Liberty from the American Revolution forward, I stand in awe of my home state's distinguished list of Patriot sons and daughters. From 19th-century notables like Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, Nathan Bedford Forrest and Sam Davis, to a long list of 20th-century Patriots headed by Alvin York, warriors from the "Volunteer State" have distinguished themselves in battle with honor and courage. Even our state's nickname was earned in recognition of the valiant service of volunteer soldiers during the War of 1812, most notably during the Battle of New Orleans.

There was a group of lesser-known Tennessee Patriots, however, whose efforts to defend Liberty at home in 1946 were no less noble. This group of World War II veterans took up arms to restore Rule of Law in the quaint east Tennessee town of Athens (McMinn County), between Chattanooga and Knoxville. That fight became known as the Battle of Athens.

Given the rigorous efforts by the current regime of Socialist Democrats occupying the Executive and Legislative branches of our federal government, revisiting the Battle of Athens provides a timely lesson in Patriot devotion to Liberty. Democrats today have nationalized the corruption of the electoral process by both overt efforts (blocking measures such as Voter ID, and endorsing voter intimidation at polls) and much more insidious covert measures (increasing the rolls of voting village idiots who are dependent on wealth redistribution for their livelihood -- those who vote for their living rather than work for it).

In 1945, more than 3,000 battle-hardened vets returned home to McMinn County and found it brimming with political corruption. The GIs, who had fought for Liberty in the European and Pacific theaters, were not going to surrender it to corrupt politicians on their own soil. A spokesman for these Patriots proclaimed, "The principles that we fought for in this past war do not exist in McMinn County."

Despite numerous complaints about the corruption since 1940, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the control of Franklin Roosevelt, ignored citizens' charges of election fraud and did not respond.

I first read the history of this incident almost 30 years ago, but I did not know until I was researching the Battle of Athens for this essay that a distinguished Republican lady, whom I have known for more than three decades, was an eyewitness to this battle.

Lill Coker is the daughter of Dr. Horace Thomas, one of the veterans who gathered with others to restore Liberty in Athens that night. She recalls the events well.

Her father had given Lill permission to go up to the roof of their home and watch the events unfold at a distance. She listened to accounts being broadcast live by the local radio station, WLAR, which was located across the street from the jail, and recollected that the radio announcer was broadcasting from under his desk to avoid bullets whizzing through his studio.

The Battle of Athens pitted Lill's father and other seasoned GIs against a large contingent of sheriff's deputies. The "law enforcement" officials were agents of Sheriff Pat Mansfield and his predecessor, wealthy state Sen. Paul Cantrell -- both benefactors of a corrupt statewide Democrat political machine controlled by E.H. "Boss" Crump from Memphis. In order to ensure the election and re-election of politicians running that machine, Mansfield and Cantrell had sheriff's deputies rigging the ballot boxes in Athens -- thus undermining the integrity of elections, the most basic expression of Liberty and the will of the people in our constitutional republic.

By 1946, some veterans were determined to challenge the Cantrell/Mansfield corruption machine, and they qualified for several posts on the upcoming election ballot. One of these men was Knox Henry, the GI candidate for sheriff of McMinn County. Endeavoring to ensure honest elections, a month ahead of the primaries they petitioned the FBI to send election monitors. As with previous requests for help to restore Rule of Law, their requests were ignored.

On Election Day, 1 August 1946, Mansfield imported some 200 strong-armed "deputies" to ensure the election would go his way. Mansfield's men ejected the veterans from polling sites, and in one instance a deputy pointed his gun at them as they attempted to re-enter a poll and shouted, "If you sons of bitches cross this street I'll kill you!" Mansfield arrested one GI poll watcher, Walter Ellis, who insisted on monitoring polling in the courthouse. One black voter, Tom Gillespie, was shot after a confrontation with a Mansfield deputy who denied him the right to vote.

After a long day of disputes at the polls, Mansfield and about 50 of his men gathered up all the ballot boxes and took them to the county jail "for protection."

The veterans weren't about to let the 1946 election cycle fall to the same corruption that had undermined the previous three elections. In the early evening, a group of vets who had been ejected as poll watchers mustered up some fellow vets. Being short of arms and ammunition sufficient to challenge Mansfield's crew and retrieve the ballot boxes, these men "borrowed" keys to the local National and State Guard armories and requisitioned three M-1 rifles, five Colt .45 pistols and 24 British Enfield rifles.

The vets then went to the jail, where they offered the deputies safe exit if they would turn over the ballot boxes. The deputies declined and shot two of the vets. The GIs returned fire in a pitched gunfight that would continue into the early morning hours of 2 August, when a number of vets from neighboring Meigs County improvised explosive devices (baled dynamite sticks) onto the jail's porch in order to soften up the resolve of the occupants. Shortly thereafter, the deputies did surrender and the GIs secured the building and ballots. (Cantrell and Mansfield, cowards that they were, had abandoned their deputies and fled into the dark early in the battle.)

Post Your Opinion: Were the GIs right to take matters into their own hands?

The non-partisan veterans delivered this message to the radio announcer at WLAR: "The GI election officials went to the polls unarmed to have a fair election, as Pat Mansfield promised. They were met with blackjacks and pistols. Several GI officials were beaten and the ballot boxes were moved to the jail. The GI supporters went to the jail to get these ballot boxes and were met by gunfire. The GI candidates had promised that the votes would be counted as cast. They had no choice but to meet fire with fire. In the precincts where the GI candidates were allowed watchers they led by three to one majorities."

The following morning, the armory weapons were cleaned and returned, and the ballot boxes were turned over for a legitimate count.

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Knox Henry Elected Sheriff

In the final count the GI candidate, Knox Henry, was elected sheriff of McMinn County, and three other vets filled key county positions. In order to thwart future corruption, the town of Athens formed a new police force. In addition, elected county officials agreed to a $5,000 pay limit. In the decade that followed, the McMinn County reforms were adopted in many other counties across the state.

Summarizing her recollection of events, Lill Coker told me, "I was so proud of all the veterans and my father for taking a stand and doing what had to be done to make sure Rule of Law was restored. They had to go against those who were supposed to be upholding law and order. The vets had gone to fight for our country in World War II and came home to find that a political machine had robbed their fellow citizens of their rights. We must be eternally vigilant against corruption of our electoral process. I am very proud of our Tennessee legislators for passing the voter ID law. We can lose our freedom just as the people of Athens did during the war years when no one stood up to the sheriff's bullies at the polling places."

The Battle of Athens was much more than an extended gunfight between small-town political factions. Historian Dan Daley wrote, "It was a violent but decisive clash of two social and political cultures, between the past and the future of rural, state, and ultimately the federal government, and a reconfirmation of the deeply ingrained ideal that Americans can assert themselves against tyranny, even when it was taking place in their own backyard."

Indeed, the corruption in the small town of Athens is but a minuscule example of constitutional abrogation that has now been nationalized by the Democrat Party. Indeed, the corrupt Chicago politics that herded a local charlatan "community organizer" into the presidency represents fraud on a grand scale.

Among the lessons learned from the 1946 events in McMinn County are these two:

First and foremost, this incident, like so many before and since, affirms why our Founders codified in the Second Amendment the unalienable right of the people to "keep and bear arms." As Justice Joseph Story (appointed to the Supreme Court by our Constitution's author, James Madison) wrote, "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." History records the appalling 20th-century consequences of disarming the people.

The second lesson is that those of us who have pledged by sacred oath to "support and defend" the Liberty enshrined in our Constitution against "enemies foreign," must be equally devoted to the defense of Liberty against insult by "enemies domestic."

Post Your Opinion: Would honoring your oath inspire you to take up arms against tyranny, even on our own soil?

One certainly hopes we can defeat the socialist corruption undermining our Constitution nationally, with ballots, not bullets, but one way or the other, the next American Revolution is just over the horizon.

(For a full accounting of this case study in grassroots restoration of Rule of Law, we have photos, a chronology and media reports at The Patriot's Battle of Athens resource page.)

Footnote: Link to Reader Comments for a note about another wealthy and powerful Athens family attempting, this time, to dupe the entire Third Congressional District by fronting an ideological Democrat under the pretense he is a Republican.

Deus et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mortis!
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

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Replies

  • I know about the Battle of Athens.

    I submit we have nothing to worry about. Our DEAR friends, the SEIU are there to protect us. YEAH,  RIGHT!!!!

  • Good article.

  • SIGN UP NOW TO BE A POLL WATCHER. YOU MAY BE SURPRISED HOW MUCH GOOD YOU CAN DO. I DO IT IN Gifford, FL--a minority community. I'm not well liked there but here's not a DAMN THING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT. I've been threatened and harrassed. After the election, that did not fare well for those folks.


    DO IT NOW

    • I agree.  Honest citizens should volunteer to be poll watchers....VERY IMPORTANT.  Also, with the poll watchers, they should take video cameras.  Perhaps one poll watcher, covering a second poll watcher..each with cameras.

      I just feel in my heart the only way Obama become president was by voter fraud.  I can't believe the Americans are that stupid!

      • .........and allow NO ONE inside the polling place except the voters. The ACLU sent a lawyer over to speak to a woman who was screaming she had been "disenfranchised"--by me. When the IDIOT lawyer stepped foot inside the polling room, I threw him out. I told him I would have him arrested by the FBI. I took photos of him inside with his legal pad in hand.

  • In this little community that I live in, we watch the polls really close.  But, then we pretty much know each other.

  • As citizens we need to be aware of our local governments.  Any local city government can become as corrupt as the one mentioned in the article.  I DO NOT like the voting machines, they can be manipulated.  Without a healthy election system, we become no better than a banana republic... nothing...easier to control.

    Citizens need to keep tabs on their city government, attending City Council meetings, watching their budget, where the money is going, watch the wages of government employees...they vote them in.  That is what happened in Bell, CA the council were voting themselves  $million a year salaries.

    There are many corrupt governments...  I also feel there was voter fraud in the Los Angeles, CA.. elections.     

    Another big one in the 1950's was Phenix City, Alabama.  There is a movie on this corrupt city, and government.  A citizen running for attorney general was murdered by the corrupt government after he wanted to clean the city up.  

    We need to primarily watch local city government,  then county, then state, then federal.   We have no hope or control, as individuals, on global government.  We are involved with the U.N...a communist organization.  Ask yourself why?

    We must turn back to God's Word, laws, principles, wisdom!  No more political correctness.

    2Chronicles 7:14

  • Recently the software company (SOE), which handles US elections, merged with SCYTL, another software company based in Spain.  The possibility of US votes being counted offshore is a definite possibility.  Every link I had to this merger is now gone, even Bev Harris' Black Box Voting.  Every one. 

  • I found a link to that SOE, SCYTL merger, with a quote from Bev Harris.

    http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/a-spanish-company-known-a...

     

    This is a must-read.

    A Spanish Company Known As Scytl Will Be Reporting Election Results For Hundreds Of U.S. Jurisdicti…
    Do you know who is going to be counting the votes on Election Day 2012?  Most Americans never even think about this.  Most Americans just assume that…
    •  

       

      Thanks for the post, Cigarette......

      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      A Spanish Company Counting the Ballots for a US National Election?

      I cannot help but remember the phrase.....

      "........It matters not who votes and for whom as long as we know who tallies the score...."

       

      Has anyone asked the question.....  WHY???  Or do we already know the answer?

      ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      A Spanish Company Known As Scytl Will Be Reporting Election Results For Hundreds Of U.S. Jurisdictions On Election Day

      Do you know who is going to be counting the votes on Election Day 2012?  Most Americans never even think about this.  Most Americans just assume that their votes will count and that the government will ensure that the counting process is done honestly and fairly.  But is this really the case?  Sadly, the vast majority of people never take the time to "look behind the curtain" to see how things really work.  If they did, they might find themselves extremely upset about what they would find.  The integrity of our voting process is of the utmost importance.  If we do not have the ballot box, then what avenues for changing our government do we have left?  Unfortunately, the integrity of our elections has been called into question quite a few times in recent years, and now a Spanish company known as Scytl will be involved in reporting election results for hundreds of jurisdictions across the United States this upcoming election day.  Will those election results be accurate?

      It is absolutely amazing that a foreign company has been able to gain such control over the reporting of election results in the United States without it ever making a significant splash in the mainstream media.

      You would think that there would be a law against this sort of thing, but apparently there is not.

      So how did this all come about?

      Well, the story starts with a company called SOE Software.

      SOE Software was founded in 2002 and has been involved in reporting election results in 25 U.S. states....

      http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/a-spanish-company-known-a...

       

       

       

       

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