While the first icy political blasts of the Cold War were being felt among the ruins of Europe in 1946, hot lead was flying a lot closer to home. The last certifiable armed engagement between citizens and their government on American soil, the gun battle that took place on the night of Aug. 1-2, 1946, and that came to be known as the Battle of Athens, was more than a shoot-out between factions in a small Southern town. 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.
For a year, the young men of Athens and other towns in McMinn County—a hilly, verdant patch of southeastern Tennessee—had been returning from World War II. The war had taken most of them, farm boys for the most part, more than a few miles from home for the first time. But letters had kept them apprised of news from home. And increasingly, that news was not good.
