Socialism.
The dictionary defines "socialism" as a "political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole".
As a working theory, on paper, the concept of self-controlling communities coming together in cooperatives to ensure that everyone is treated equally sounds like a utopia. But the bare truth is numerous atrocities have been committed by both government and individuals alike who have hidden behind the doctrines of socialism for the betterment of themselves.
So it was in Polk County , which after the onset of WWI was fraught with new adherents of socialism who not only espoused their rights to outlaw behavior and bootlegging, but used their newfound political awareness to also resist conscription into the armed forces.
A particularly defiant cell of dissenters lived in and around the rural community of Hatton , some 26 miles south of Mena and approximately six miles east of the Arkansas/Oklahoma border. Sparsely populated even to this day, the area was well suited for both boot-legging and hiding from the dangers of the war registration efforts.
On May 25, 1918, Sheriff H. W. Finger of Polk County assembled a posse in Mena to apprehend a gang of evaders in the surrounding countryside. The following morning, the posse surrounded the home of one of the evaders, Robert Harkey, and a shootout ensued.
Before traveling to Hatton, the posse first located a man by the name of Lon Coughran outside of Mena , who revealed where the cadre of draft dodgers were hiding. The law enforcement group then traveled to Vandervoort where they left their cars. By then the posse had grown to 36 men.
The entire group traversed several miles of wilderness to get the home of one of the gang members named Robert Harkey. Upon arrival Sheriff Finger and one of the deputies stepped on the veranda and called Harkey to the door. They started to go into the house but when Finger saw that Mrs Harkey was not dressed, he gave the order to all the deputies to stand down.
At that instant a volley of shots rang out from the door of another room. "All hell broke loose" with posse members and outlaws exchanging rapid fire gun shots.
A particularly radical hot-head named Elmer Cason emptied a rifle at the officers before it jammed, then jumped out a window and started over a fence.
Cason was riddled with rifle balls and buckshot and was dead before he hit the ground.
When Sheriff Finger went to the Harkey bedroom, he found Mrs Harkey had been shot in the right breast and placed her on the bed. Four children were all on a pallet on the floor and were unhurt.
Edward and Robert Coughman were both found with wounds and Harkey was placed under arrest. During examination of the chaotic scene outside, Finger discovered one of his deputies, Charles Kirkland, had been thought through the heart and was dead.
Levi Pigg, a Mena postman, and a young man with the name of Jack Steel both were wounded.
A story in the Mena Weekly Star said that several others had "felt the sting of powder but not a man, old or young is even suspicioned of flinching".
Four men were bound over for trial in the shooting.
The sentiment in the county ran towards lynching the entire lot, but a surviving brother of Deputy Kirkland addressed a restless and mean-spirited crowd from the steps of the Polk County Courthouse and implored the man responsible for his brother's death be "left to the conscription of the law"
Caughron’s brothers, Lon and Edward, were given fifteen years in prison and a life sentence, respectively. Robert Harkey received sixteen years, while various other members of the gang also received lengthy sentences.
Mrs. Harkey eventually recovered from her wound suffered during the affray.
Oddly, none of the gang was tried on charges of resisting the draft, as the trials occurred in state, rather than federal, courts. This pattern would persist in several other draft resistance cases.
Ben Caughron was found guilty of Charles Kirkland's deliberate murder and resisting arrest in a timely manner. He received an electric chair execution sentence. .
Governor Charles Brough was petitioned to execute Caughron as soon as possible. He visited Caughron’s cell and, after a lengthy interview, decided not to intervene in the case either way.
Caughron made statements to the press seemed to indicate that he and his group’s resistance was more cultural than political, as the kin-based “mountain folk” had always been defiant of central authority.
He told the Arkansas Gazette : “If we had been shown by people we know that the draft was for the nation’s good, that it was not forcing us to war for rich men’s profits, we would have gone….You can’t force mountain men. You can’t force anybody who is not afraid to die, and the mountaineers are not afraid to die.”
Ben Caughron was executed on August 23, 1918.
Kirkland was laid to rest in the Concord Cemetery at Ink, just a couple of dozen yards off State Highway 88.
All of the pallbearers had been member of the posse on May 18, 1918.
Donations poured in from all over the county that were earmarked for Kirland's family.
