The 'Cleburne County Draft War' - The Remake

Guest post by Gary

     In 1967, scholar James Frederick Willis, a native of Heber Springs, Arkansas, described an event termed the ‘Cleburne County Draft War’ as being the occasion “when over 200 possemen and soldiers with two machine guns attempted to subdue 8 Russellites.”(1) It has remained the classic review of the event ever since. So, what happened and how accurate a description is this?

 

     Using primarily newspaper reports from the time, Willis related that on Saturday, July 6, 1918, Sheriff Jasper Duke, from Heber Springs, Arkansas, and two fellow officers, including Bill Bice, prepared to raid several addresses between Rosebud (White County) and Pearson (Cleburne County) so as to capture five ‘slackers’.  Dr S.A. Turner and Porter Hazelwood were also persuaded to join the posse with the Sheriff suggesting, “I’ll get you a gun. There’s $50 a piece in it for each of us. I’ll divide the spoils with you.”

 

     Unsuccessful visits were made by the five-man posse late that night in searches for various men but on Sunday morning, just before sunrise, they sneaked up on the farm home of the 58-year-old Tom Adkisson’s family, slipping into a barn under cover of darkness. As we now know, Adkisson’s younger son, 24-year-old Charley Bliss, had registered for the draft claiming exemption as an International Bible Student and was called up to Camp Pike some months earlier, but failed to arrive.  He and his brother-in-law, Leo Martin, both gave incomplete addresses on their draft cards, suggesting perhaps, that if they were to be conscripted the authorities would have to come and find them, which - eventually - is precisely what happened! (2)

 

      Usually when enlisted Bible Students from cities and major towns failed to report to army camps, shortly afterward they received a polite visit at their home from a local policeman and amicably accepted their inevitable arrest before being taken to camp where, if they resisted further, they received court martial under the charge of desertion. But in Cleburne County, Arkansas, they did things differently.

 

     Willis acknowledges that conflicting accounts exist as to precisely what happened next.  Whether the Adkisson family knew who the visitors were and why they had chosen to arrive at such an ungodly hour is debateable. Suffice to say that in the twilight someone fired a shot, gunfire was briefly exchanged, Porter Hazelwood was badly injured, and the posse hurriedly fled. Hardy Richmond Adkisson, Bliss’ older brother, found Hazelwood and the family arranged for him to be moved and cared for at a neighbor’s house. A doctor was called for, but sadly Hazelwood died later that afternoon. 

 

     Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s party had returned in haste to Heber Springs with news of the incident. Unsurprisingly, it drove the townsfolk into a state of frenzy and within a short space of time twenty-five men carrying rifles were recruited from here, Searcy, Pearson, and Quitman to return to the Adkisson farm and bring in the ‘slackers’ by force. 

 

     According to various newspaper reports, between the two visits Tom had invited other young men from the area who were known to be sympathetic to his position to show their support.  When the second posse returned, it is said that some of these young men were in the house, while others were perched with guns in defensive positions in tree-tops or hidden in the underbrush.  Further that both sides engaged fire for forty-five minutes before the Adkisson party somehow slipped away into the forest, allegedly setting the underbrush afire behind them to block pursuit.

 

     Gathering more volunteers, including Sheriffs from neighboring counties and bloodhounds, the posse blitzed through the countryside without ever locating the Adkisson ‘gang’.  With popular imagination running riot, local towns panicked as rumors circulated that a large “band” of desperate armed deserters would soon attack. By now, in addition to Tom Adkisson there were only eight men being searched for and their interests were only to defend themselves rather than to attack others. Also, it is questionable too whether they were all together at the time of the visit of the second posse to the Adkisson place. Even so, the local authorities called for more help so that by Monday, July 8, thirty men from the Fourth Arkansas Infantry, National Guard, arrived in Heber Springs, bringing with them two machine guns.

 

     For the next few days, the National Guard and the local forces scoured the countryside searching for the men without success. Meanwhile, several of the men’s families and friends were rounded up in a local hotel with a local Bible Student preacher, who was said to have stirred the sedition, and his family.  Some of these were threatened with lynching, and their food supplies were confiscated to ensure that nothing could be passed to those on the run. Effectively, if these could not be found they were to be starved into submission.

 

     By Saturday, July 13, when the National Guard returned its machine guns back to Little Rock, all the resistors, who were hiding in different locations, had surrendered. Significantly, each turned themselves in to the authorities from neighboring regions so as to avoid retribution from the posse from their own county. As Tom Adkisson put it, “A band of men around Heber Springs … were trying to do us harm, and that is the reason we would not surrender up there.” 

 

     As one might expect, since the event followed the national ban on the distribution of the book The Finished Mystery and the recent imprisonment of Joseph F. Rutherford and his fellow IBSA directors under charges of sedition, it was open season on verbally attacking Bible Students.  It is no wonder then that, in the aftermath, the local newspapers blamed the Russellites’ resistance on their religion, their isolation, and their ignorance. In particular, the Arkansas newspapers homed in on the local Bible Student minister, TH Osborne, who it implied had misled these simple country folk into a course of sedition.  A doomsday scenario was even conjured up suggesting that since these millennialists believed themselves living near the time of Armageddon, surely they were planning on fighting their way through it all to the bitter end, weren’t they? All entertaining to read, of course, but though neither Willis nor the newspapers of 1918 might not have known it, this was not in any way reminiscent of early Bible teachings which instructed adherents to respect the superior authorities (Romans 13:1-7) and that “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD.” (2 Chronicles 20:17) At no point were Bible Students instructed ever to become involved in armed warfare, since they believed “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” but spiritual. (2 Corinthians 10:4) Besides only Almighty God Jehovah himself would bring Armageddon and, in so doing, would certainly not need the assistance of puny men, with or without guns.(3) 

 

     At the trial that followed, the Adkisson’s vehemently denied firing the first shot and claimed their actions were motivated not out of millennialist zeal, but purely from a need for self-defense. Naively they had anticipated their explanation of events would be substantiated by the Sheriff’s deputy, Bill Bice. However, to their dismay, for whatever reason Bice failed to appear in Court. As the case for their defense floundered, Tom Adkisson was sentenced to serve two years for voluntary manslaughter, while his son Bliss was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment after having been found guilty of second-degree murder. (4) A later report located recently from the Newport Daily Independent, Arkansas, dated Saturday, January 11, 1919, p1, added that “four of them, Leo Martin, Lon Penrod and two of the Blakeleys were sent to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth for five years.”(5) Evidently these, alongside Bliss Adkisson, were the five ‘slackers’ the local posse initially searched for.

 

 

     In a commendable summary, Willis concluded that if the Bible Students “panicked, thus betraying, perhaps unknowingly, their own beliefs, the solid-citizen-patriots blatantly desired a bloody sacrifice to their offended patriotism and blindly violated portions of the national ideal which they proudly purported to defend.”  In the end, therefore, neither side came out with any glory.(6)

 

     But is this the end of the story?  Most of what Willis recorded came from the local newspapers of the time, yet how reliable were these? For one thing the newspapers frequently misspelt the names of several men, as did Willis in turn.  The two Blakeley brothers were actually the Blakey brothers, Jesse and Lum, whose full names were Jesse Fountain Blakey and Christopher Columbus Blakey. Additionally, Lon Penrod was John Penrod!  Further, the IBSA preacher TH Osborne was Thomas Houston Ausburn. Worse still, in their hurry to report the events the papers played fast and loose with the facts by ‘joining the dots’ and making assumptions.  For instance, one report bizarrely speculated that three members of the gang had already received military induction before deserting camp and returning home carrying their army rifles!(7) The New York Times erroneously claimed the incident had ended on July 8, since Tom Adkisson had been killed and all the remaining men had been captured. (8) Another report suggested that an illegal alcohol still was found in searches of his house following the visit of the second posse.(9) Each of these misrepresents the men by conjuring up a ‘gang’ of intoxicated and dangerous desperadoes on the run, presumably intent on causing mayhem to whoever crossed their path. A few reports said that the second posse discovered a ‘food hoard’ at the Adkisson farm which the posse impounded and distributed to the army. This may well be true, since prior to American involvement in the war, Pastor Russell had encouraged prudent Bible Students to collect for a possible ‘day of distress’ so as to share with others in need.(10) Unsurprisingly, as if to prove their sedition, the papers made much of the fact that searchers found a copy of the book The Finished Mystery at the Adkisson home, although possession, as opposed to distribution, was not in itself an offense.  Consequently, The Pulaskian newspaper carried the front-page headline ‘Russellite Books Cause Sedition’ with the shocking subheading stating that the ‘Finished Mystery is read by all those who sought to resist draught and defied officers in Cleburne’.  It quoted Major Brandon, who had arrived to supervise the search, as saying that “we are convinced that the young men acted in compliance with instructions issued by ministers of the Russellite faith. They advised the men to register, but not to report or don the uniform of the United States. If the Russellite faith is not suppressed, it should be immediately.” The newspapers made much of the fact that women from the respective families of those on the run had been used in trying to contact the men and convince them of the need to surrender. One even provided a cartoon making jest of the situation. (11)

 

 

     No official account exists to explain what happened from a Bible Student perspective. Yet is so uncharacteristic of early Bible Student thought and actions that it seems inevitable that more must be involved to this account than has been popularly remembered.

 

Time for a remake?

 

     Given that Willis didn’t have access to Ancestry records as do modern researchers, and that he had limited access to Bible Student records, he relied heavily on the newspapers of 1918 and the court record to compile his account. In fairness he tried his best to produce a balanced account though the evidence he sifted was itself inevitably lop-sided. As a result, he seemed to side with the seemingly inevitable conclusion of the time that Russellism was the cause of the whole misery. I believe, however, that if Willis told the story today and tapped into the right sources he would likely change much.

 

     Scanning newspapers of the time one can find an article, for instance, which hints at a slightly different scenario to that recalled by Willis and popularly received.(12) It again implicated the local Russellite preacher, which this time it correctly named as Houston Ausburn, and who it said had “imbedded” in to Tom Adkisson’s mind the Russellite message to such an extent that “he does not believe in war of any kind.” Adkisson is quoted as having said that Ausburn was one of the finest men he ever knew and “he preaches the whole truth, I believe.” Interestingly for what will follow, it also said that Adkisson and Ausburn had shared a crop for the last two years. However, importantly it commented:

 

     ‘Although Tom Adkisson would not discuss the gun fight at his home Sunday morning, July 7, Bliss said today that the gang had heard after they were in the woods that the officers of White, Faulkner and Cleburne counties had planned to raid the Adkisson home Monday morning, but the Cleburne County Sheriff, Bliss said, decided to capture them on Sunday.’ They refused to talk about the shooting, however, except to say that when the posse of about 25 men returned after the shooting of Hazelwood, the men were in the field and the posse began shooting at the house. The women told them to come in and search the house, Adkisson said, but they refused, cursing the women, he said. The men then came out of the field and the second battle began. After the battle the men kept to the woods all of the time.’

 

     Two things come out from the report. Firstly, the assertion that a joint approach was to have been made to collect the ‘slackers’ but that the local Sheriff hurriedly seized the opportunity to take the men and credit for himself.  Secondly, that “the men were in the field” when the second posse of twenty-five men arrived. We may not be able to ascertain the accuracy of the first claim, but the second claim presents a very different scenario than that popularly received. Whereas earlier newspaper accounts had it that the Adkisson’s had mobilised support and were ready and waiting for the return of a larger posse, the account attributed to Bliss shows the men in the fields, unprepared, and only eventually returning toward the house with the intention of protecting their kin. The Adkisson account, if one is inclined to accept it, offers a more likely explanation of how the men were able to escape from the posse. It suggests they attempted to return to the house, came under considerable fire and thereafter were forced to retreat in haste. This seems a more likely scenario since had some of the Adkisson contingent, perhaps only a few men, been in the house when the second posse arrived it would be difficult to imagine how any of these could possibly have outmanoeuvred a twenty-five men posse to escape unscathed to the fields.

 

     At this point, I introduce a further piece of evidence that is over 100 years old but that Willis likely would not have had at his disposal. The St. Paul Enterprise, an unofficial Bible Student paper, contained a letter from IBSA travelling minister M.L. Herr in May 1919, about a Brother TH Ausburn from Rosebud, Arkansas, who Herr credits being privileged to visit since he learned “by actual fellowship the depth of the Divine Spirit that dwells in this consecrated heart.”(13)

 

     Herr goes on to talk of the way that, in contrast with the St. Paul Enterprise, “worldly newspapers, controlled by Satan and his spirit of lying, accomplish Satan’s purpose.”

 

     The letter explains Ausburn’s background.  We are told for instance, that “for 14 years Brother Ausburn was an earnest young minister in the Baptist church in the rural district. In 1914 he met a Photo-Drama operator, Claude Stambough, who interested him “in present truth”.  The letter says that Ausburn “acted promptly leaving all to follow Jesus. It cost him something.” Herr explained that Ausburn had a wife and six children to look after but left the comfort of the Baptist ministry to humbly accept “an opening to raise cotton and do lumbering 12 miles from the railway on the mountain-side.”

 

 

     In the next paragraph, Herr touches on the Cleburne draft incident as he explains:

 

     ‘During the war, ignorant mountaineers refused registration and others drafted refused to respond. The enemies of the Truth and Brother Ausburn saw their opportunity and perceiving the winds of bitterness and hatred favorable they filled the newspapers with lying reports of the influence of a Russellite preacher who was back of the ‘slackers.’ In the accounts these ‘slackers’ numbered hundreds, but when facts were obtained the number shrank to five for whose foolish action, subsequently abandoned, it was amply proven Brother Ausburn was in no sense responsible. A mob with disguise of law wantonly destroyed provisions and property.  I am told: the losses aggregating $500.  The sum becomes much larger when one reflects upon how meagrely the Arkansas mountaineer lives and what it costs in hard labor to produce this much in that country.  The brother was cast into jail and a full month elapsed before he was released.’

 

     By this point the reader may already have been struck by a very different picture being presented than that of the news media of the time, and indeed Willis’ account from 1967.

 

     Herr’s account tells of that a “mob with disguise of law wantonly destroyed provisions and property.” Evidently, he believed the posse returned intent on doing more than simply capturing Bliss Adkisson. They also wanted retribution for the death of Hazelwood, however it occurred. And yet there is still more that can be added to Herr’s account. 

 

     While researching the ‘Cleburne County Draft War’ online I came across yet another article relating the incident much as had the papers in 1918. However, a telling 2016 blog comment from a man named Robin J. White stated: 

 

     My Grandmother was a witness to all of this. She lived to 102 years old and the youngest of his children. This battle only happened after the Adkisson family was burned out of 2 homes, family business burned to the ground, livestock stolen and killed. He was the sole provider for a large family.(14)

 

     Of course, blog comments from alleged relatives given 98 years after an event should be treated with caution and not granted the veracity of evidence such as Herr’s report from 1919, but it does support the idea that lives, homes and livelihood were being threatened by the arrival of the first two posses. Indeed, Tom Adkisson always maintained throughout his trial that his motivation in acting was only that of protecting his large family and personal self defense. And while I do not include the comment to justify the shooting of Hazelwood in anyway, it suggests what happened occurred under extreme provocation.

 

     So, is this blog entry a valid historical family story that has been preserved? Ancestry.com enables modern researchers to check the credibility of the statement to some extent. Tom Adkisson did indeed have a daughter named Nora Jewell Adkisson who lived a long life, dying in 2006 at 102 years of age.(15) Perhaps a reader of this blog, maybe even Robin J White himself, might be able to add further information? 

 

     What may we conclude then from this unhappy episode?  It is always easy to be wise in retrospect, but Bible Student conscientious objectors in 1918 who lived in rural areas with gung-ho sheriffs and excitable locals might have found it better to have simply arrived in army camps when instructed and then downed tools, so as to speak, by refusing the military uniform and drills. Any alternative that involved resistance by use of weapons inevitably would end in disaster. (Matthew 26:52)

 

     It is indeed sad to report what happened to both Porter Hazelwood and, ultimately, to Bliss Adkisson too. Bliss behaved well during his imprisonment and eventually gained a position of trust and oversight as a prison guard at the Tucker Prison Farm. However, on September 18, 1921, when the notorious bank robber Tom Slaughter attempted to escape, Bliss Atkinson was killed in trying to prevent him.(16) 

 

     As for the Blakey brothers, these served time in the Fort Leavenworth Detention Barracks, and in the case of Jesse, the Pacific Detention Barracks, otherwise known as Alcatraz. Eventually they were given an early dishonorable discharge from an army they never considered they belonged to in the first place. However, it should be noted that while they registered for the draft, neither claimed exemption as International Bible Students. Further, while the Adkisson and Blakey families were related and likely worked together, evidence from the Swarthmore database of American WWI conscientious objectors suggests that the Blakey brothers, along with John Penrod, actually belonged to the restorationist Churches of Christ faith.(17) It is also unclear what involvement, if any, they had in either of the two shooting incidents at the Adkisson farm. 

 

     What though of the local IBSA preacher Thomas Houston Ausburn, who was blamed by the newspapers for having bemused the relevant families into believing millennialist teachings as if they had no mind for themselves?  In fact, we now know that he had only become a Bible Student in 1914 whereas, in contrast, Tom Adkisson acknowledged:

 

     ‘I have been a student of Pastor Russell’s for 30 years. And if there is anyone to blame for the literature in that country it is I.’(18) 

 

     Even so, reporters were astounded to hear Tom Adkisson’s speak and see his manner which was not that of a country yokel as they had expected.  “To talk to him is a revelation for his grammar is that of a highly educated man”, stated the Arkansas Gazette.(19) 

 

     Regardless, Adkisson made it clear that he was neither repentant or apologetic for what had happened:

 

     ‘If it came up again like it did the last time, I would do just like I have done, I believe.’(20) 

 

     I do not know what happened to Tom Adkisson following the end of his prison sentence other than that he died in 1932. As regards Thomas Houston Ashburn, he retained his beliefs as a Bible Student and Jehovah’s Witness. His Ancestry.com entry shows he died in March 1961 and was given a Jehovah’s Witness funeral on March 14 before his interment at the Mount Zion Cemetery, Steele, Missouri.(21) 

 

     God alone knows the full story of this unpleasant episode in Bible Student history. But at last history allows for a more balanced approach to be taken which considers evidence from the Adkisson perspective rather than relying solely on the patriotic newspaper accounts of the time. Putting together newspaper reports with the those given by Herr and more recently White, I would suggest a possible explanation involves the second posse pursuing the Adkisson males back into the fields and then spitefully setting alight to the crop owned jointly by Adkisson and Ausburn, while blaming the Adkisson family for causing the fire to block pursuit. 

 

     We may conclude therefore by saying that the ‘Cleburne County Draft War’ involved just one known Bible Student conscientious objector, Charley Bliss Adkisson, who had been drafted and not reported when requested to do so. Tom Adkisson and Hardly Richmond Adkisson also became involved when attempting to protect their family after an over enthusiastic posse threatened their family and livelihood. At least five and possibly six other men who were not Bible Students also were searched for.  The newspapers of the time, Willis’ 1967 account and indeed social history ever since has largely blamed the ‘Russellites’ for the incident. However, we must understand the public’s willingness to apportion blame in the context of the times.  Bible Students were viewed with suspicion and hatred because of their refusal to support civic and military affairs. The book The Finished Mystery had been banned from distribution earlier that year and the Watch Tower Society President Joseph Rutherford and six fellow directors had recently been found guilty in relation to a charge of sedition. So how else would the ordinary American citizen likely understand reports of the Cleburne incident?

 

     Thankfully, Herr’s St. Paul Enterprise letter went on to relate how things changed dramatically for Ausburn within less than a year of his ordeal. It explained that “the publicity given the case and the manifest injustice has reacted in favour of our brother. People know him and they know also the character of the persons active in his persecution.”(22) Indeed, during the petition made by Bible Students earlier in the year to pardon Rutherford and his co IBSA directors, Herr records that as a consequence of Ausburn’s conduct and reputation “the governor of the state, mayor of Little Rock, ex-mayor, lawyers, doctors and even ministers gladly signed the petition for the pardon of our brethren.”(23) 

 

     The tragedy of Porter Hazelwood’s death inevitably is the significant moment that marks the ‘Cleburne County Draft War.”  Yet the ‘war’, if it ever was such, in fact involved only two brief skirmishes and, eventually, a search of over 200 possemen and soldiers with two machine guns for eight or nine men, only five or six who had been called up and only one of whom is known, based on completion of their draft registration forms, to have been an International Bible Student.(24) Therefore, although ‘Russellism’ took the blame for what had happened it was in fact only one factor among several motivating those involved. 

 

References:

 

(1) James F. Willis article, The Cleburne County Draft War, appeared in The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1, (Spring, 1967, pp. 24-39)

 

(2) Draft registration forms are searchable on Ancestry.com. Bliss was registered in class one as a single person but failed to answer his call. His older brother Hardy was married with a dependent child, and so consequently was registered as class 4 and never called up. 

 

(3) As an example, see The Time is at Hand (1889) - Studies in the Scriptures vol. 2, p.82

 

(4) Adkisson vs. Arkansas, Criminal Transcript No. 2398 (Little Rock: Justice Building, Supreme Court Archives, p.1-226)

 

(5) Newport Daily Independent, Arkansas, dated Saturday, January 11, 1919, p1.  This repeated a report given earlier in the Judsonia Weekly Advance, August 21, 1918, p1

 

(6) James F. Willis, The Cleburne County Draft War, p39

 

(7) The Sentinel Record, Hot Springs, July 10, 1918, p1

 

(8) New York Times, July 8, 1918

 

(9) Daily Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, July 17, 1918

 

(10) See the article entitled ‘The Prudent Hideth Himself’ in Watch Tower, November 1, 1914, p 334-334, (R5571-5572)

 

(11) The Puluskian, Pulaski Heights, Little Rock, July 19, 1918, p1

 

(12) Daily Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, July 17, 1918

 

(13) Letter from M.L.Herr to Brother Stewart, appearing in The Saint Paul Enterprize, May, 13, 1919, p2, column 1, letter in the Voices of the People section 

 

(14) https://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2013/10/cleburne-county-draft-war.html?m=1

 

(15) Ancestry.com search

 

(16) Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, September 20, 1921

 

(17) The Adkisson and Blakey families were related, since Ancestry.com reveals that Tom Adkisson was a younger brother of Susan Minerva Blakey, mother of Jesse, Jim and Lum. 

 

Records for Jesse, Lum and John Penrod can be found in the Swarthmore database of WWI US conscientious objectors, searchable at https://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/conscientiousobjection/WWI.COs.coverpage.htm

 

Many Churches of Christ members held millennialist views at this time with those following the teachings of David Lipscombe tending towards pacifism. Similar to the Bible Students, Lipscombe taught that all “wars and strife between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God.” As a result, many followers believed that the use of coercion and/or force may be acceptable for purposes of personal self-defense but that resorting to warfare was not an option open to them.

 

(18) Arkansas Gazette, July 20, 1918

 

(19) Arkansas Gazette, July 17, 1918

 

(20) The Log Cabin Democrat, July 16, 1918

 

(21) Herr letter, The Saint Paul Enterprize, May 13, 1919, p2

 

(22) Ibid

 

(23) Ibid

 

(24) Another man who is also said to have been searched for was Amos Sweeten. However, he did not claim to be a Bible Student on his draft registration form but requested exemption on grounds of poor health (asthma).

 

Consequently, the nine men ‘on the run’ can be named as:

 

(i)   Tom Adkisson (father) 

(ii)  Charles Bliss Adkisson*

(iii) Hardy Richmond Adkisson 

(iv) Jesse Fountain Blakey*

(v)  James Madison Blakey 

(vi)  Christopher Columbus Blakey*

(vii) Leo D. Martin*

(viii)John William Penrod*

(ix)  Amos Sweeten*

 

I have added an asterisk beside the six men subject to the Draft call as of July 1918.