The politics of southern draft resistance, 1917-1918: Class, race, and conscription in the rural South

Journal of American History

Volumn 87, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 1335-1361

  Keith, Jeanette ^a  

^a BLOOMSBURG UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750171174     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2674731     Document Type: Review

References (117)

1. Howell Jackson, report, June 15-18, 1918, Old German File 17,761, roll 349, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, RG 65 (National Archives, College Park, Md.).
2. Unlike the transcripts of resistance described by James C. Scott, these are not encoded in culture, but are written documents, often compiled by agencies of the state. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).
3. For books indicative of the grip the Great War maintains on the British imagination, see Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (London, 1998);
4. John Keegan, The First World War (London, 1998);
5. Pat Barker, Regeneration Trilogy (London, 1996).
6. For United States home front history, see David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980);
7. Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York, 1991);
8. Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order (New York, 1979).
9. For top-down views of Wilson administration policies, see Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917 (New York, 1954);
10. Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921 (New York, 1985);
11. Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence, 1992).
12. On surveillance and civil liberties, see Joan M. Jensen, The Price of Vigilance (Chicago, 1968);
13. Theodore Kornweibel Jr., "Seeing Red": Federal Campaigns against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 (Bloomington, 1998);
14. H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (Madison, 1957);
15. Roy Talbert Jr., Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917-1941 (Jackson, 1991);
16. Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia, 1988).
17. If one book on the World War I draft is all we have, it is nice to have a book this good, and I build on it in this essay. See John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (New York, 1987), 211-13.
18. On the impact of the war on the Left, see Talbert, Negative Intelligence;
19. Jensen, Price of Vigilance;
20. Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago, 1969);
21. Frances H. Early, A World without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse, 1997);
22. David Williams, "The Bureau of Investigation and Its Critics, 1919-1921: The Origins of Federal Political Surveillance," Journal of American History, 68 (Dec. 1981), 560-79;
23. Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982).
24. For the suggestion that repression was rational because it reduced opposition to the war, see Schaffer, America in the Great War, 30.
25. In this paper, I have defined rural as nonurban, outside the region's cities. On the martial South, see John Shelton Reed, One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture (Baton Rouge, 1982), 139-53;
26. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982);
27. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York, 1941);
28. Jack Temple Kirby, Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (Baton Rouge, 1978);
29. Paul Gaston, The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking (New York, 1970).
30. Chambers attributes sporadic resistance to sharecroppers, mountaineers, and western Indians, whose actions "posed little threat to the enforcement or legitimacy of Selective Service." See Chambers, To Raise an Army, 212.
31. For a blunter account that finds among the participants in the green corn rebellion "much ignorance, religious superstition, and discontent," see Peterson and Fite, Opponents of War, 40.
32. On the preparedness movement and its critics, see John Patrick Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon: The Campaign fir American Military Preparedness, 1914-1917 (Westport, 1974);
33. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 73-177;
34. Michael Pearlman, To Make Democracy Safe for America: Patricians and Preparedness in the Progressive Era (Urbana, 1984).
35. Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon;
36. Chambers, To Raise an Army. 103-77;
37. Alex Mathews Arnett, Claude Kitchin and the Wilson War Policies (Boston, 1937), 160-84;
38. Seward W. Livermore, Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916-1918 (Seattle, 1966), 6.
39. On the "widespread agrarian fear of international complications, militarism, and monopoly," see Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville, 1983), 383-87. I identify correspondents here as rural based on their addresses, and as white on the basis of their lack of reference to their own race, as well as their familiarity with politics. Typically, black rural southerners writing white authority figures began their letters by identifying themselves by race and used deferential, careful, and nonpolitical language. Hugh A. White to Claude Kitchin, Dec. 11, 1915, file 72, box 6, Claude Kitchin Papers (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); W. T. Hefley to Kitchin, Jan. 7, 1916, file 87, box 7, ibid. Not all of Kitchin's mail supported antipreparedness. See, for example, "Resolutions Adopted by the North Carolina Cotton Seed Crushers' Association, at Norfolk, Va.," Dec. 10, 1915, file 72, box 6, ibid.; and A. C. House to Kitchin, Feb. 3, 1916, file 103, box 8, ibid.
40. Despite the presidents insistence on the "volunteer" aspect of the continental army, the members of the army's General Staff admitted in congressional hearings that they considered it a step toward universal military training. See Chambers, To Raise an Army, 103-24.
41. Arnett, Claude Kitchin, 227-36;
42. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 153-77.
43. Livermore, Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 16-24;
44. William F. Holmes, The White Chief James Kimble Vardaman (Baton Rouge, 1970), 306-25.
45. Rep. J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama, a strong supporter of conscription, argued that the draft would protect white womanhood. See Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 sess., April 26, 1917, pp. 1227-28. For the use of Civil War conscription as an example on both sides of the House debate over the 1917 draft, see ibid., April 25 and 26, pp. 959, 967, 1018, 1051, 1111, 1171-72. V. E. Sigman [signature not clear] to Kitchin, April 7, 1917, file 300, box 20, Kitchin Papers.
46. J. R. Moore to Rep. Edwin Yates Webb, file 249, box 13, Edwin Yates Webb Papers (Southern Historical Collection); Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 sess., April 25, 1917, p. 1094;
47. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 162-64;
48. Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 sess., April 26, 1917, p. 1234; H. Q. Alexander to senators F. M. Simmons and L S. Overman and congressmen Webb, Kitchin, and others from North Carolina, file 300, box 20, Kitchin Papers.
49. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 157-59, 165-66, 176-77. My statement that southern politicians believed farmers had received a blanket deferment is also based on the John Sharp Williams Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.) and the Webb Papers.
50. John Sharp Williams to C. S. Butterfield, April 25, 1917, box 79, John Sharp Williams Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.); Thad A. Cox to Thomas Rye, Dec. 21, 1917, file 6, box 14, Governor Thomas Rye Papers (Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tenn.); F. Fred Johnson to Rye, May 31, 1917, ibid.
51. Eugene Cunningham Branson to George Lanier, Jan. 17, 1918, file 92, box 2, Eugene Cunningham Branson Papers (Southern Historical Collection).
52. W. M. Black to Webb, April 17, 1917, file 251, box 13, Webb Papers; Chas Gibson to Webb, June 18, 1918, file 261, ibid.
53. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 180-83. The provost marshal general instructed governors to supply names for district boards, to be composed of one doctor, one lawyer, and one representative each of agriculture, industry, and labor. See Enoch Crowder to all governors, June 18, 1917, file "General Letters May 9, 1917 to [blank]," box 315, Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), RG 163 (National Archives, Washington, D.C.); Local Draft Board Experience Files, ibid. Provost Marshal General Crowder informed Mississippi governor Theodore Bilbo: "Members of boards are drafted for the service upon which they are engaged." Crowder to Theodore Bilbo, Aug. 16, 1917, file 12, box 1321, Theodore G. Bilbo Papers (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson).
54. Chambers, To Raise an Army, 191;
55. Second Report of the Provost Marshal General to the Secretary of War, On the Operations of the Selective Service System to December 20, 1918 (Washington, 1919), 108-16;
56. Keegan, First World War, 402.
57. Of the 4,883,213 married men registered for the draft between June 5, 1917, and September 11, 1918, only 3,619,466 received dependency deferments. Even after calculating in deferments given for other reasons, 488,537 married men remained eligible for service. Second Report of the Provost Marshal General, 108-16, esp. 116. Sen. Henry F. Hollis to Joseph Tumulty, Aug. 25, 1917, file 3735a, series 4, Woodrow Wilson Papers (microfilm, 540 reels, Library of Congress, 1973), reel 353.
58. In 1917 the Souths population was at least 75% rural. The percentage rural in 1910 was: Alabama, 82.7; Arkansas, 87.1; Georgia, 79.4; Florida, 70.9; Louisiana, 70.0; Mississippi, 88.5; North Carolina, 85.6; South Carolina, 85.2; Tennessee, 79.8; Texas, 75.9; and Virginia, 76.9. See U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910 (11 vols., Washington, 1913), II, 20, 92, 338, 300, 760, 1024,
59. Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910, III, 268, 638, 720, 772, 916. In 1913 southern farm laborers could expect to earn about $20 per month.
60. George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge, 1964), 33-37, 111,320;
61. Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (New York, 1986), 66, 202;
62. Second Report of the Provost Marshal General, 192-93.
63. Rep. Frank Clark to Woodrow Wilson, Sept. 10, 1917, file 3735, series 4, Wilson Papers, reel 353; letter from community group, Faxon, Benton County, Tennessee, n.d., filed with correspondence from 1917, file 2, box 15, Rye Papers. In 1920, only 47.5% of the farmers in the South owned their land: 60% of white farmers and 22.4% of black farmers. Although most black farmers were either sharecroppers or renters, most sharecroppers were white. See Wright, Old South, New South, 99-123.
64. On hill-country farmers, see Stephen Hahn, The Roots of Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Up country, 1850-1890 (New York, 1983);
65. Je anette Keith, Country People in the New South; Tennessee's Upper Cumberland (Chapel Hill, 1995);
66. Paul Salstrom, Appalachia's Path of Dependency: Rethinking a Regions Economic History, 1730-1940 (Lexington, Ky., 1994). In 1918 the Selective Service began requiring that conscripts fill out questionnaires and provide financial statements, including information on income, property, and savings. Illiterate or semiliterate southern farmers of both races would have found it impossible to fill out the complicated forms; nor would most have had documentation of their annual income.
67. See file: "Rules and Regulations, PMG," section 268, pp. 126-214, box 317, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.).
68. th Division, Camp Sevier, Greenville, S.C., Nov. 17, 1917, file 3, box 14, Rye Papers.
69. Local Draft Board Experience Files, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.). I pulled the boxes of county-level reports filed for each southern state and went through all draft board reports that were not from large cities. I may have understated the percentage of communities that encouraged men to avoid the draft. I have counted as "pro-exemption" only communities where boards' answers indicated that many exemptions had been requested with the support of the community.
70. Quotations throughout are given for illustration; the conclusions drawn in the text are based upon the totality of the reports: reports from Hawkins County, Tenn., box 45, Local Draft Board Experience Files, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Fentress County, Tenn., ibid.; Washington County, Tenn., ibid.; Gordon County, Ga., box 7, ibid.; Saluda County, S.C., box 43, ibid.; Princess Anne County, Va., box 50, ibid.; Southampton County, Va., ibid.; Gregg County, Tex., box 47, ibid.; Shelby County, Tex., ibid.; Davie County, N.C., box 34, ibid.; Transylvania County, N.C., box 35, ibid.; Wilkes County, N.C., ibid. For quoted passages, see reports from Saluda County, S.C., box 43, ibid.; Princess Anne County, Va., box 50, ibid.; Gregg County, Tex., box 47, ibid.; and Shelby County, Tex., ibid.
71. st copy)," box 317, ibid.; Second Report of the Provost Marshal General, 108-13; Frederic C. Wardevard to Major Clark, Report of Agent of Department of Justice on the Local Board for Crittenden County, ArL, Dec. 11, 1918, including report of James Maynard, Nov. 15, 1918, on William Richards, file Ark. 17-112, box 86, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.). On the problems in East Tennessee, see file Tenn. 17-28, box 273, ibid., esp. R. L. Deal, report, [1918?]. H. E. Hildebrand to Crowder, Feb. 25, 1918, box 315, ibid.; Local Draft Board report, Milam County, Tex., box 46, ibid. See also a lengthy file documenting the political motivations of the draft board of Turner County, Ga., in file Ga. 17-184, box 110, ibid.
72. These percentages reflect married men deferred for all reasons, including occupation. Second Report of the Provost Marshal General, appendix, 401.
73. Monroe County, Tenn., box 45, Local Draft Board Experience Files, Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), RG 163 (National Archives, College Park, Md.); Polk County, Tenn., ibid.; Rhea County, Tenn., ibid.; Hardeman County, Tenn., ibid.; Gibson County, Tenn., ibid.; Walker County, Ala., box 1, ibid.; Dallas County, Ala., ibid.; Perry County, Ala., ibid.; Craighead County, Ala., ibid.; Cherokee County, Ga., box 6, ibid.; Screven County, Ga., box 8, ibid.; Columbia County, Fla., box 6, ibid.; Union County, S.C., box 48, ibid.; Caldwell County, Tex., box 46, ibid.
74. Wilkes County, N.C., box 35, Local Draft Board Experience Files, ibid.; Appomattox County, Va., box 50, ibid.; Franklin County, Tenn., box 45, ibid.; Sequatchie County, Tenn., ibid.; Monroe County, Tenn., ibid.; Polk County, Tenn., ibid.; Rhea County, Tenn., ibid.; Cherokee County, Ala., box 1, ibid.; Crenshaw County, Ala., ibid.; Dallas County, Ala., ibid On the interplay of race and gender in the plantation belt, see Gerald E. Shenk, "Race, Manhood, and Manpower: Mobilizing Rural Georgia for World War I," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 81 (Fall 1997), 622-62.
75. For examples, see Geneva County, Ala., box 1, Local Draft Board Experience Files, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Mclntosh County, Ala., ibid.; Cherokee County, Ala., ibid.; Hawkins County, Tenn., box 45, ibid.; Sequatchie County, Tenn., ibid.; Franklin County, Tenn., ibid.; Suwannee County, Fla., box 6, ibid.; and Lee County, Tex., box 46, ibid On charges against the draft board of Clay County, Ark., see O. T. Ward to Crowder, May 30, 1918, file Ark. 17-53, box 86, States File, ibid.; Petition from "farmers and citizens of Clay County, Ark." to Crowder, received Sept. 3, 1918, file Ark. 17-110, box 86, States File, ibid.; L. Hunter to Lloyd England, report, Oct. 18, 1918, ibid.; Local Draft Board Experience Files, box 50, ibid.; and Complaint from Local Board of Frederick County, file Va., 17-106, box 292, States File, ibid.
76. Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I (Philadelphia, 1974), 36.
77. Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I Ibid., 36-49; William L. McCalley to Joel B. Mallett, file Ga. 17-15, box 109, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); W. S. Price to Sen. Hoke Smith, May 19, 1919, ibid.; Montgomery County, Ala., box 1, Local Draft Board Experience Files, ibid.; Monroe County, Ala., ibid.; Schley County, Ga., box 7, ibid.; Oconee County, Ga., ibid.; Dillon County, S.C., box 43, ibid.
78. Clifton Gray to Adjutant General, Arkansas, report, Sept. 11, 1918, file Ark. 17-81, box 86, States File, ibid.; Milton Wayman Guy to Emmett Scott, July 11, 1918, ibid.
79. FileTex. 17-174, box 280, States File, ibid. R. L. Boatrite, "In Re: Investigation Local Board Dothan, Ala.," July 10, 1918, file Ala. 17-106, box 77, ibid. Similar proprietary attitudes on the part of planters in Georgia are documented in Shenk, "Race, Manhood, and Manpower."
80. Montgomery County, Ala., box 1, Local Draft Board Experience Files, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Craighead County, Ark., box 2, ibid.
81. Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers, 21-32, 70-163.
82. Jackson County, Fla., box 6, Local Draft Board Experience Files, Selective Service Records (Washington, D.C.). Other Florida counties reported problems over this issue. See Santa Rosa County, ibid.; Wakulla County, ibid.; Baker County, ibid.; DeSoto County, ibid.; Lake County, ibid.; Manatee County, ibid.; and Suwannee County, ibid By 1918 conscription policy was reformed in that "white and colored quotas" were assigned to each community. See Chambers, To Raise an Army, 224-25. See Crowder to Bilbo, quoted in "Governor (Bilbo) To the District Board for the Northern District of Mississippi," Sept. 10, 1917, file 17, box 1322, Bilbo Papers. Bilbo to Crowder, Sept. 12, 1917, file 18, ibid.; Bilbo to District Boards, Sept. 13, 1917, ibid.
83. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 198.
84. Robert Wilson, "The Farmers' and Laborers' Protective Association of America, 1915-1916" (M.A. thesis, Baylor University, 1974), iv-vii, 12, 13-75. For evidence that an officer of the Farmers' and Laborers' Protective Association was a government spy, see William Odell to R. L. Barnes, July 3, 1917, reproduced in R. L. Barnes, "In Re: Farmers and Laborers Protective Assoc.," July 7, 1917, Old German File 1889, roll 289, FBI Records. For the United States attorney's statement, see Odell to Attorney General, May 17, 1917, reproduced, ibid.
85. Wilson, "Farmers' and Laborers' Protective Association," 47-75;
86. Barnes, "In Re: Farmers and Laborers Protective Assoc."
87. Schaffer, America in the Great War, 13-15.
88. Nancy MacLean, "The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism," Journal of American History, 78 (Dec. 1991), 917-48;
89. C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (1938; New York, 1955), 360-410.
90. Jeffersonian, July 19, 1917. Although Watson blamed the war on Wall Street, he dropped almost all of his anti-Semitism for the duration of his antidraft crusade.
91. Jeffersonian, 1917. Although Watson blamed the war on Wall Street, he dropped almost all of his anti-Semitism for the duration of his antidraft crusade. Ibid.;
92. "In Re: Tom Watson," Old German File 17,761, roll 349, FBI Records.
93. "In Re: Tom Watson";
94. Woodward, Tom Watson, 360-410.
95. Woodward, Tom Watson, 456-61;
96. Jeffersonian, Aug. 2, 1917. Max Eastman, Amos Pinchot, and John Reed, editors of the Masses, wrote to President Wilson about the suppression of small papers. The Jeffersonian held first place on their list of the disappeared. Max Eastman et al. to Wilson, July 12, 1917, file 4122, series 4, Woodrow Wilson Papers, reel 362.
97. Charles C. Hodges to Scott, July 17, 1918, file Tenn. 17-116, box 273, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.).
98. Ernest W. Morelock to Rye, Sept. 5, 1917, folder 3, box 16, Rye Papers.
99. Governor Brough to Crowder, Nov. 7, 1918, file Ark. 17-109, box 86, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Crowder to Rye, telegram, Nov. 4, 1918, file Tenn. 17-149, box 273, ibid. On delinquents, see Adjutant General of Alabama to the Provost Marshal General, report, July 1, 1918, file Ala. 17-33, box 77, ibid.; report from Phillips County, Ark., to the War Department, Aug. 23, 1918, file Ark. 17-62, box 86, ibid. On state and local authorities' predatory behavior toward deserters, see Commanding General 31st Division Camp Wheeler, Ga., to Adjutant General, Army, "Alleged Deserters," report, Nov. 5, 1917, file Ga. 17-14, box 109, ibid.; and W. S. Price to Smith, May 19, 1918, file Ga. 17-15, box 175, ibid. On Mississippi's delinquent rate, see Office of Judge Advocate General to the Provost Marshal General, July 8, 1918, file Miss. 17-108, box 175, ibid.
100. For a depiction of black Americans' service in World War I as patriotic, wholehearted, and based on the belief that such service would win citizenship rights, see Barbeau and Henri, Unknown Soldiers.
101. For revisionist views, see Mark Ellis, "'Closing Ranks' and 'Seeking Honors': W. E. B. Du Bois in World War I," Journal of American History, 79 (June 1992), 96-124;
102. Theodore Kornweibel Jr., "Apathy and Dissent: Black America's Negative Responses to World War I," South Atlantic Quarterly, 80 (Summer 1981), 322-38;
103. Steven A. Reich, "Soldiers of Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship, 1917-1921," Journal of American History, 32 (March 1996), 1478-1504.
104. On white reactions to black discontent, see Kornweibel, "Seeing Red"; and Bureau of Investigation report, Old German File 22310, FBI Records.
105. Theodore Kornweibel Jr., ed., Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917-1925): World War I, the Red Scare, and the Garvey Movement (microfilm, 25 reels, University Publications of America, 1985), reel 9.
106. Files Ala. 17-11, 17-65, and 17-108, box 77, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Walter Tully to J. L. Green, n.d., file Ark. 17-13, box 86, ibid.; Sabine County, La., Local Draft Board Experience Files, Louisiana, box 17, ibid.; St. Landry County, La., box 18, ibid.
107. Report on Liberty County, Ga., file Ga. 17-103, box 109, States File, ibid.; Report on Union County, Ga., file Ga. 17-179, box 109, ibid. James Ernest Gilreath is listed as a willful deserter charged with murder in Union County in Final Lists Delinquents and Deserters, Union County, Provost Marshal General Office forms 4003, Georgia, box 17, Records of the Selective Service System (World War I), RG 163 (National Archives, Southeast Division, East Point, Ga.). See also United States v. Frank Crowley alias Frank Crawley. Union County, Oct. 1919, case no. 3043, Northern Division of the North District of Georgia, District Court of the United States, ibid.; "Indictment against Rosa Crowley alias Rosa Crawley," March 1919, United States v. Rosa Crowley alias Rosa Crawley, file 3393, case no. 3041, ibid.; and United States v. Frank Crowley alias Frank Crawley. Nov. 1919, file 3390, case no. 2918, ibid. Joel B. Mallet to Provost Marshal General, report, Oct. 16, 1918, file Ga. 17-167, box 110, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); W. S. Nash to Crowder, Oct. 8, 1918, Selective Service Report, State of Georgia, ibid.; Tindall, Emergence of the New South, 51.
108. Computed from Report of the Attorney General, 1918 (Washington, 1918), 157-237. (Available at the National Archives, College Park, Md.)
109. Gov. Thomas Rye of Tennessee informed Crowder that he was unable to get local sheriffs to arrest deserters: Rye to Crowder, April 12, 1918, file Tenn. 17-40, box 273, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.). Carroll County Democrat, April 12, 1918;
110. Southern Sentinel (Tippah County, Miss.), May 2, July 11, 1918;
111. Alexandria [Tennessee] Times, July 3, 1918; file Tenn. 17-108, box 272, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.).
112. In Arkansas, the draft resisters were Jehovah's Witnesses, according to James F. Willis, "The Cleburne County Draft War," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 26 (Spring 1967), 24-39. See also file Tex. 17-48-4, box 279, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); file Tex. 17-133, box 280, ibid.
113. Most desertion and sedition cases in the federal court records at the National Archives, Southeast Division, East Point, Georgia, were marked "Nolle Pros." after the armistice. For a discussion that attributes Watson's victory to the popularity he gained as a result of the Frank case, see MacLean, "Leo Frank," 946.
114. But the Frank case was five-year-old news in 1920, while the events of the war years were fresh in the memory of Georgia voters, and Watson campaigned on the war: see Columbia Sentinel, Feb. 25, 1920.
115. Woodward, Tom Watson, 400-420. Sen. Thomas Hardwick of Georgia, an anti-intervention, anticonscription southern Democrat, was crushingly defeated in 1918 but made a triumphant return by winning the governorship of Georgia in 1920.
116. For the argument that Hardwick's fate shows the formerly isolationist South becoming interventionist as a result of the war, see Anthony Gaughan, "Woodrow Wilson and the Rise of Militant Interventionism in the South," Journal of Southern History, 65 (Nov. 1999), 771-808.
117. Second Report of the Provost Marshal General, 108-16, 210-12. Residents of North Carolina charged that Crowder's report misrepresented conditions there. The North Carolina legislature passed a resolution in protest, and Crowder apologized; see Crowder to Gov. T. W. Bickett, Feb. 23, 1919, file N.C. 17-153, box 222, States File, Selective Service System Records (Washington, D.C.); Memo from Local Board of Exemptions for Mitchell County to Crowder, Feb. 21, 1919, ibid.; and Resolution 33, H.R. 783, S.R. 660, North Carolina General Assembly, ratified Feb. 26, 1919, ibid.