In 1946, World War II veterans in a small Tennessee town armed themselves, laid siege to the county jail, and forced a corrupt local government out of power. It is one of the only times in modern American history that citizens took up arms against their own officials and won. Paul Cantrell's machine, tied to Memphis boss Ed Crump, had run McMinn County since 1936 on a fee system that paid deputies per arrest. Returning GIs got picked up and fined repeatedly. In May 1946 they formed the GI Non-Partisan League and ran their own slate. On election day, Sheriff Pat Mansfield brought in some 200 out-of-county deputies at $50 a day. One shot a Black farmer, Tom Gillespie, in the back for trying to vote. When the polls closed, deputies carried the ballot boxes into the jail and barricaded themselves in. The veterans broke into the National Guard armory, surrounded the jail, and fought a six-hour gun battle before using dynamite. The deputies surrendered around 3:30 a.m. Nobody died. The ballots were counted in public.