Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

“If you people don’t stop this, and now is the time and place,” shouted Bill, “you wouldn’t make a pimple on a fightin’ GI’s ass!”

As the crowd accepted the challenge with a thunderous roar of applause, Bill ordered his friends and neighbors to exercise one of the rights they had all fought so hard to protect.

“Get your guns, boys!” ordered Bill White. “And then meet me at the jail.”

9:00 P.M.

The common law of Tennessee provides that every citizen has the right to stop a criminal in the act of committing a felony. In a similar spirit, the state constitution’s Declaration of Rights says: “That government, being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.”

These abstract doctrines, however, were as far from Bill White’s mind that night as they had been at Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He was no lawyer or philosopher; Bill White was a fighter, and he didn’t need anyone or anything to tell him whether to fight for the things he believed to be right.

Bill stood across the street from the McMinn County Jail and shouted, “We’ve come for the ballot boxes!” The redbrick fortress now protected Paul Cantrell, Windy Wise, sixty deputies, and the ballot boxes that, if counted fairly, would hand the Cantrell machine its first political defeat.

Behind Bill White, in the darkness, was a semicircle of five hundred armed veterans and GI supporters. Farmers held shotguns that had hung peacefully above their fireplaces for decades. Hunters carried their .22s and veterans their .45s. There was even a contingent of skinny, baby-faced teenagers who’d come with BB guns and visions of glory. More ominous for the Cantrell machine was the collection of military rifles taken from the local armory and divvied among men who had last used them in places like Bastogne and Iwo Jima.

“Bring out those damn ballot boxes!” Bill called again.

Perhaps because of the darkness, Windy Wise didn’t realize the size of the force opposing him, or perhaps he was simply so accustomed to having his way that it never occurred to him to hold his tongue. He had earned his nickname, after all, for being long-winded as a boy. Whatever the reason, Wise’s next words made it clear that those in the jail were not taking the situation as seriously as they should have.

“Why don’t you call the law?” Wise called out a second-story window as the “law” inside the jail laughed along with his joke.

“There ain’t no law in McMinn County!” Bill fired back, not amused.

A brief silence followed, broken by the unmistakable locking sound of a shotgun’s barrel snapping into its handle.

“Aw, go to hell!” shouted the deputy who had loaded the weapon. Bill had only a moment to wonder which deputy it was before the man aimed into the crowd of GIs and pulled the trigger.

The blast echoed down White Street, past the Dixie Café and the county courthouse beyond. Fifteen of the pellets found GI supporter Edgar Miller’s shoulder and eight more lodged into supporter Harold Powers’s neck. Like Tom Gillespie’s, their wounds were not fatal.

Powers refused to leave the jail, but he did take cover, as did Bill White and the hundreds of men around him. Several dozen ran into a boardinghouse directly opposite the jail, where the windows of guest rooms provided the perfect cover from which to fire back at the thieves and bullies across the street.

Before those running for the boardinghouse could make it up the stairs, a barrage of gunfire rang out from those on their side who had found protection outdoors, behind cars and trees and the short walls of a nearby hillside. Glass windows shattered, and sparks punctuated the darkness.

Bill White fired both cartridges from his double-barreled shotgun, emptied the rounds in his rifle, and then shot his pistol until no bullets remained.

Then he reloaded all three weapons and repeated the cycle.

One more time , he thought to himself. One last fight for what’s right .

The battle for Athens had begun.

August 2, 1946

1:15 A.M.

Windy Wise had seen Paul Cantrell many times, but never like this. On a normal day, Cantrell strode down the streets of Athens with the most confident of airs and the most distinguished of looks. This look featured a walking cane that he did not need, rimless glasses and suspenders, and the hat of a southern gentleman, always tipped off to the side just so. The political boss had been so sure of his position, so invincible in his own mind, that he’d named his prize bird dog “Lady Fee-grabber.”

But four hours into the Battle of Athens, with bullet holes in the walls and several deputies on the floor bleeding and dying, Paul Cantrell was feeling something he hadn’t felt in more than a decade: fear. The hat and cane were gone, the fidgety twitch he’d tried to suppress since childhood had returned, and sweat was streaming down his large head and onto his small neck.

“Any word from the governor?” asked Wise, walking into Cantrell’s makeshift office, where torn and crumpled ballots lay strewn across the floor. Their markings were irrelevant to the vote count Cantrell would report if he could survive the siege.

“Don’t know,” Cantrell said in his slow southern drawl. “The GI boys shot out the phone lines fifteen minutes ago.” He wiped a stream of sweat from his forehead. “Last we heard, the National Guard was on its way.”

Since their first volley, the GIs had kept up periodic barrages of fire. Their ammunition, which they’d retrieved from homes, hardware stores, and the local armory, seemed endless. In contrast, Cantrell’s men had spent most of their bullets in the first half hour of gunplay. They needed to save the rest to defend against what they believed to be an inevitable storming of the jail.

The state guard, which was under the command of a politically loyal governor, was the Cantrell machine’s best hope, though many in the jail doubted whether the governor in Nashville would risk his reputation to save a mountain county boss fighting a band of popular and heroic war veterans.

“Think they’ll come?” asked Wise.

Cantrell wiped his forehead again and fidgeted with a pipe.

When he finally looked Wise in the eye, he looked as afraid as his deputies cowering in the jailhouse.

“No.”

2:45 A.M.

Crouched behind a copse of trees he had been using all night for cover, Bill White knew that time was not on his side. The GIs had been winning the battle, but the siege could only last so long. How many armed supporters, brave enough to stand by him in darkness, would cautiously melt away at dawn? And what about the rumors of the National Guard coming to Cantrell’s rescue?

“There’s an old saying,” Jim Buttram said to Bill. “If you’re gonna shoot at the king . . .” Buttram paused. “Don’t miss.”

Bill knew he was right. If reinforcements from the governor arrived before Cantrell surrendered the ballot boxes, his regime would somehow survive. And if it did, his vengeance would be sure and swift. Bill White knew that he would likely be the first to experience it.

“I had a few boys go out and get some dynamite,” Bill said, pulling a couple of sticks of the explosives from his jacket pocket. Then, for the first time that night, he flashed a wide smile. “I think it’s time we end this thing.”

Buttram nodded in agreement, and within minutes Bill had taped three sticks of dynamite together and heaved the first bundle toward the jail.

As soon as the dynamite left Bill’s hand, he knew it was going to land short of the jail. It did, sliding under a deputy sheriff’s Chrysler in the no-man’s-land of parked cars separating the jail from the GIs. The massive car lifted into the air, turned over, and crashed back to the pavement, its windows shattering.