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My first job after college consisted of my work week split between The Citizen-Advance in Copperhill, Tenn., the Blue Ridge Summit-Post in Blue Ridge, Ga., and the Cherokee Scout. The Copperhill paper was edited by Ed Middleton, a World War II vet. It was printed each week on the Scout’s old presses in Murphy.
I was surprised Middleton didn’t use a visor and arm garters while editing, but in all other ways he was the picture of an old-time editor.
One of the visitors who would stop by the Citizen-Advance office was R.E. Barclay, a Polk County, Tenn., historian and author, who proudly wore his lapel ribbon for the Silver Star he won in World War I.
Both men were key players in the destruction of the McKeller-Crump political machine that ruled Tennessee politics for decades. Their battleground was just over the state line in Polk County, and the dangers they faced were not unlike the dangers they faced in combat.
A political machine controlled the government in those days, which also meant they controlled state and county jobs, favors and were not above rigging an election should that be needed to remain in power. Their power was enforced through the sheriff’s office, which intimidated all, took a commission of all fines as part of their payment – and in corrupt counties, many innocents found themselves facing trumped-up charges to help line the pockets of the political machine.
Returning World War II vets fought and won that war for democracy, but upon returning many found the political machine manipulators not unlike the dictators they had fought overseas. They felt it time for a change.
The first vestiges of that change occurred in 1946 in Athens, Tenn. The returning vets found themselves the targets of the local sheriff in part because they had money from their military service. However, it soon became clear that a deputy with a blackjack and .38 was not intimidating men who had faced German machine guns and Japanese Banzi charges.
The veterans established their own political party to challenge the machine – and were leading in the early voting when the machine attempted their usual heavy-handed tactics, arresting veteran poll watchers, shooting one, bringing in 300 “special deputies” and eventually confiscating the ballot boxes and taking them to the Athens jail to count the ballots – unsupervised.
The vets were having none of it, at one point breaking into the National Guard Armory and arming the vets, bringing forth three .30-caliber machine guns and surrounding the courthouse, demanding a public count of the vote. Gunfire erupted, and after the vets blew the doors off the jail with dynamite, the deputies surrendered. Thousands of blank ballots were found in the cells, with some already marked for the machine candidates. The machine’s rigged election was waylaid.
The event is known today as “The Battle of Athens.” In 1992, a movie would be made about the event, An American Story, starring Tom Sizemore and Kathleen Quinlan. Today, that event would be called an insurrection, with likely a totally different resolution.
The Athens event set a precedent for other veteran groups to organize and overthrow the old machine, and the movement spread.
In Polk County, the sheriff affiliated with the McKeller-Crump political machine was Birch Biggs. In some circles, Polk was known as “Biggs County” due to his iron grip on local politics.
In the 1948 election, the machine was opposed by a large group of vets organized as the “Good Government League.” The head of that group was R.E. Barclay.
In the weeks leading up to the election, there had been gun play between the Biggs faction and the Good Government Leaguers. One man was killed in an ambush that also wounded the son of Biggs’ justice of the peace candidate.
Near Ducktown, Earnest Loudermilk’s body was found in the road from a bullet in the back. Two other members of the Loudermilk family, as well as Wayne Kimsey and Chester Goode, were all wounded.
After a heated standoff in Benton that went to the point of guns drawn, a curfew was declared, and the governor sent in the National Guard.
One sore point was the issuing of poll tax receipts, required to cast a vote. Biggs’ office was controlling those receipts and controlling who received them. The Good Government League members were threatening to storm the courthouse in a manner that would have made Benton the site of its own battle, as had occurred in Athens two years earlier.
The turning point in the election was a motorcade from Copperhill, where the Good Government League was headquartered, delivering the ballot boxes to Benton. Leaving Copperhill and driving down the Ocoee toward Benton, there was an attempt to prevent the delivery of those ballots.
The motorcade was fired upon, with glass fragments wounding some. The column was not deterred and delivered the ballot boxes, and in doing so delivered Polk County from the decades-old political machine.
Leading that motorcade was a combat veteran and winner of the Silver Star, R.E. Barclay. Beside him in the front seat was a former Army captain, a veteran of the China-Burma-India theater, who at war’s end single-handedly received the surrender of an entire Japanese held town. His name was Ed Middleton.
The McKellar-Crump political machine and Birch Biggs’ hold on Polk County both ended with the election of 1948, thanks to the bravery of American veterans.
Bruce Voyles’ local history column runs every other week in the Cherokee Scout. Email him at RoadsLessTraveled@cherokeescout.com.