An American Insurrection by William Doyle

Author:William Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385504874
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2002-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

At the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, an exhausted Ross Barnett was in a state approaching total shock. He never thought things would fall apart this horribly. Barnett’s hands were shaking so violently that he couldn’t pick up the phone.

Across town, the switchboard at Mississippi Highway Patrol headquarters was flooded the entire night with Americans who wanted to join in the insurrection. Colonel Birdsong’s assistant Charles Marx stayed up the whole night answering the calls, telling people to stay home.

“People were calling in from across the nation wanting to volunteer their services,” Marx recalled in a 2000 interview. “They asked where to report, where to bring their arsenals and weaponry to join the revolt. There were serious people who wanted to join the ‘rise of the South.’ There was a drunk from Louisiana who said he’d bring ten thousand people.” The calls even came from the far western states of Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada. “Who do we report to?” asked one caller from California. “We have vehicles and munitions. We can furnish aircraft for air support. We’re ready to go to war.”

Ross Barnett was hunkered down in a small study in the mansion, a portrait of despair. Outside the study’s door was a larger meeting room, which was filling up this night with a churning coterie of perpetually bickering advisers.

Citizens Council hard-liner Louis Hollis had interpreted Barnett’s 7:30 speech as a capitulation and hurried across the street to confront the chief executive. “Governor, everybody thinks you’ve surrendered,” a teary-eyed Hollis implored. “Everybody in the office is crying. You’ve got to tell them you haven’t surrendered.” The hard-liners argued if Barnett got on the air now to issue a final call to battle, enough reinforcements would arrive to force the marshals out. Tom Watkins and other moderate advisers fought back with all the arguments they could think of.

Charles Clark, a young Jackson attorney who was serving temporarily as special state assistant attorney general for the Meredith case, barged into Barnett’s study. It seemed to Clark that Barnett might be on the verge of overruling the moderates and returning to the TV studio to issue a call to arms. Clark addressed the governor: “Do you know what’s happening? People are being killed at Oxford! Governor, what I suggest you do is get on the radio right now and do anything you can to calm those crowds down and tell them to go home.”

Barnett listened intently to Clark’s impassioned plea. “Governor, you need to stop this. You ought to tell the people of Mississippi that the United States Army is capable of putting anybody into the university physically and that they should not resist. They should go home.” Barnett graciously thanked Clark and soon returned to his study as his aides continued bickering. Clark left the room. He had done the best he could.

Incredibly, Ross Barnett had been able to shield the Citizens Council hard-liners from the fact that for the last fifteen days he had been consorting with the Kennedys over putting James Meredith into the university.

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