The reason for this Democratic strength is not clear. A clue may be found in the popularity of the Regulator groups often claiming to be part of the Ku Klux Klan. Their rise reflected a dislike of federal postwar policies, a dislike that in part accounted for the pro-southern sympathies so prevalent in Kentucky following the war. Many slave-holding Kentuckians had remained loyal to the Union in the war and felt betrayed when Lincoln freed their slaves without compensating them for their loss. Others resented what they considered the highhanded methods of Union commanders who, in the months following the war, occupied Kentucky and treated its citizens as though the state had been in rebellion. And many simply hated blacks for their role in causing the disastrous war and for what whites considered their insolent or “uppity” conduct after emancipation. Thus many former Union soldiers became members of the Ku Klux Klan, harassing not only blacks but people friendly with federal officials.
It is strange that Marcum let political differences split his law firm. He had practiced in Breathitt for seventeen years and had represented the largest corporations doing business in Eastern Kentucky, including the Lexington and Eastern Railroad. He was a trustee of Kentucky State College (later the University of Kentucky) and a U.S. commissioner. His partner, O.H. Pollard, was almost equally prominent.
Relations between the two men remained polite, if chilly, until depositions concerning the election contest were taken in Marcum’s office. Hargis and Callahan were there, as well as Pollard. Marcum was cross-examining a witness when Pollard objected to the line of questioning and the two former partners almost came to blows. Hargis and Callahan drew pistols, and Marcum ordered everyone to leave his office. Police Judge T.P. Card well subsequently issued warrants for the arrest of the principals. Marcum appeared in court, confessed that he had drawn a pistol, and paid a fine of twenty dollars, but Hargis, for years a political enemy of Cardwell, refused to be tried by him. Tom Cockrell, at the time town marshal of Jackson, was sent to arrest Hargis and bring him into court. Cockrell took his brother Jim with him.
When Tom Cockrell informed Hargis that he was under arrest and asked him to come with him, Hargis started to draw his pistol. Cockrell beat him to the draw, but Sheriff Ed Callahan, standing nearby, pulled his pistol and covered Cockrell. At the same time Jim Cockrell pulled his pistol and covered Callahan. Hargis and Callahan, seeing that they were outgunned, two pistols to one, surrendered. But Marcum had sent word to Cardwell that he did not want to prosecute Hargis and asked that his case be dismissed. This was done, and everyone hoped that friendly relations might be reestablished.
That was not to be. Several months later Marcum and Callahan had an argument over a school election. The trouble was settled amicably, but Marcum then charged Callahan with the murder of Marcum’s uncle, and Callahan accused Marcum of assassinating his father. Something seemed to be happening to Marcum, embittering him. His actions at times seemed to invite trouble.
Then violence erupted. Town Marshal Tom Cockrell and Ben Hargis, a brother of James, met in a “blind tiger” (an illegal saloon—Breathitt had voted dry in 1871) and got into an argument. One thing led to another, both men drew pistols, and Ben Hargis was killed. Judge James Hargis and his brother, State Senator Alex Hargis, insisted on prosecuting Tom Cockrell for murder.
Dr. D.B. Cox, the leading physician of Breathitt, was the legal guardian of the orphaned Cockrell children, including Tom, who, though still under twenty-one, was town marshal. Dr. Cox had married a sister of Police Judge Cardwell and was a close friend of James Marcum, who agreed to defend Tom Cockrell without fee. Indeed, the Hargis-Cockrell feud, like the earlier conflicts, pitted relatives against each other. Senator Alex Hargis was married to a sister of J.B. Marcum. (Breathitt historian E.L. Noble says she was Marcum’s niece.) Curtis Jett’s father was a brother of Tom and Jim Cockrell’s mother. Curtis Jett’s mother (he became a major figure in the violence) was a half-sister of James and Alex Hargis. And so on. It is hard to see how these people managed an amicable home life, being constantly at war with their in-laws.
Jerry Cardwell, a cousin of Police Judge T.P. Cardwell and a member of the Cockrell faction, was a railroad detective. It was not his primary duty to keep order on passenger trains, that being the task of the conductor, but on this particular occasion he was riding in the passenger coach toward Jackson when John “Tige” Hargis, who had been drinking, became disorderly, cursing and waving a pistol. The conductor complained to Cardwell, who tried to quiet Hargis and, when Hargis kept threatening to shoot, tried to arrest him. Hargis resisted. Both fired. Cardwell was wounded, Hargis was killed. The Hargis family, charging that Cardwell had picked the fight and killed John without provocation, took him to court, and he was sentenced to two years in prison. Upon appeal, however, he was pardoned by Governor W.O. Bradley, left Breathitt, and went to live in Wolfe County. Two weeks after Tige was killed, Elbert Hargis, a half-brother of Judge James Hargis, was shot from ambush and killed in the yard of his home in Jackson while making sorghum molasses. No one was ever arrested for the murder. The Hargises were understandably alarmed and angry. Ben, John, and Elbert had been killed, and no one was in prison for their deaths.
A few days later Dr. Cox received a message around eight o’clock at night asking him to attend a sick woman living near Jackson. He left, telling his wife that he would return shortly, but as he reached the corner across from the courthouse and opposite the stable of Judge Hargis, he was shot and killed. His murderer then ran up and fired another shot into the body. It was reported that the shot came from Judge Hargis’s stable. Members of the Cockrell faction charged, of course, that Dr. Cox had been killed because of his interest in the defense of Tom Cockrell, and in court it was charged that Judge Hargis and Ed Callahan were watching from the second floor of Hargis’s home when the fatal shot was fired. They said they didn’t know anything about it. Never heard any shot.
Jim Cockrell, who had been busy gathering evidence for the trial of his brother Tom, succeeded Tom as Jackson town marshal. It was not an easy time to be marshal. He hadn’t been in office long before he ran into Curtis Jett one night in the dining room of the Arlington Hotel. Words led to pistols. Neither man was hurt, though the dining room was battered. Then, at noon on June 28, Marshal Jim Cockrell was killed by a shot fired from a window on the second floor of the courthouse. Judge James Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan were standing on the second floor of Hargis’s store and saw Cockrell fall. Though law officers, they did nothing to assist him.
It was widely rumored that Curtis Jett, at the time a deputy of Sheriff Ed Callahan, did the killing and that he remained in the courthouse until that night, when friends brought a horse to the side door and helped him ride off, undetected. Jett was a dangerous, hot-tempered young man who apparently took part—and a very bloody part—in the feud for the excitement of it. He was the son of Hiram Jett, who had left Breathitt for Madison County after making peace with the Littles, and the grandson of Curtis Jett Sr., a prominent merchant who took no part in the troubles.
Attorneys for Tom Cockrell, charged with killing Ben Hargis, asked Judge David Redwine to vacate the bench in the Cockrell case, since he was known to be a close political friend of Judge Hargis. Redwine stepped down, and Judge Ira Julian, of Frankfort, appointed in his place, granted a defense request for a change of venue. The case was transferred to Campton, in Wolfe County. But Judge Hargis and his brother Alex, who had brought the suit against Cockrell, refused to go to Campton. They protested that if they had to travel the road from Jackson to Campton their enemies would ambush them along the way, that they would never reach Campton alive. Judge Julian had no choice but to dismiss the case.
They probably were not exaggerating the danger. In a letter to the Lexington Herald, J.B. Marcum declared that over thirty men had been killed in Breathitt since Hargis took office as county judge, “and Lord knows how many wounded.” In a similar letter written on May 25, 1903, Mrs. Marcum stated that there had been “thirty eight homicides in
Breathitt County during the administration of Judge James Hargis.”
The most notable among these was J.B. Marcum himself, who was shot down in the Breathitt County Courthouse on May 4, 1903. The shooting could hardly have been a total surprise. Ever since Marcum became attorney for the plaintiffs in the suit contesting the county elections, there had been reported threats against his life. On November 14, 1902, he said, in a written statement:
I heard the rumor that Dr. Cox and I were to be assassinated; he and I discussed these rumors and concluded that they were groundless. I went to Washington D.C. and stayed a month. While I was there Dr. Cox was assassinated. I was attorney for Mose Feltner. On the night of May 30th he came to my house in Jackson and stated that he had entered into an agreement with certain officials to kill me. He said that their plan was for him to entice me to my office that night, and for him to waylay me and kill me. He said that the county officials had guaranteed him immunity from punishment [for the earlier killing of a man named Fields], and he led them to believe he would kill me to secure their protection, all the time warning me of plans to kill me. He could visit me without arousing suspicion as he was my client and supposed to pretend friendship for me.
For weeks Marcum had been afraid to go outside his home, and in an affidavit he filed with the circuit court he declared that he was “marked for death.” He was. Even after some of the bitterness of the election contest wore off, Marcum seldom went to his offices without taking his small grandson with him, thinking that would-be assassins would not chance hitting the child. (Again, some say that Marcum took his baby son, not grandson, with him for protection.)
But on the morning of May 4 he went alone to the courthouse to file some papers in the election case. After filing, he walked from the clerk’s office to the front door, where he stood talking to his friend Captain Benjamin Ewen. Suddenly there was a shot from the hallway behind them, and Marcum slumped forward. “Oh, Lordy,” he moaned, “I’m shot. They’ve killed me!” Ewen turned and saw Curtis Jett raise his pistol and fire another shot through Marcum’s head. Marcum fell forward, brushing Ewen, who ran from the doorway to avoid being shot. He testified that a few minutes later he saw Jett and Tom White near the side door of the courthouse and heard Jett “express satisfaction with his aim.”
Marcum’s body lay in the doorway for some time (some witnesses later said it lay there an hour, others said it was only fifteen minutes), since his friends were afraid to approach the body and the local officers were paying no attention. At the time Marcum was shot, Judge James Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan were sitting in rocking chairs in the front door of Hargis’s store, across from the courthouse, from where they had a clear view of the courthouse doorway where Marcum fell and of the hallway where the killer fired the shot. They looked on with some interest but without deserting their rocking chairs. It was generally assumed that they were not taken entirely by surprise.
Three weeks later, on May 21, 1903, Curtis Jett and Tom White were indicted for the murder of Marcum. White was a drifter who had come to Jackson a few days previously to get a job, he said, but he had applied only to Elbert Hargis. Also accused, but on the lesser charge of conspiracy to murder, were Mose Feltner, John Smith, and John Abner. But it was the case against Jett that drew national attention.
Tom Wallace, then a reporter for the Louisville Times, described the joys of covering the trial before it was transferred to Harrison County:
When we—the militia and reporters—arrived, not one light was burning inside any Jackson residence. Householders ate their evening meal while it was still light and sat in the dark till it was time to feel the way to bed. It was feared that the roystering young men who fired pistols in the streets at night might shoot at any residence light and kill someone sitting near it. Jackson sidewalks were made of plank. After dark people feared to walk on the sidewalks lest the rattling of a loose plank cause someone to shoot in the direction of the sound. The custom was to walk in the street where footfalls in the dust—streets were not paved—would be soundless. There was danger that two persons walking in the dark might collide. I know one man who carried a lantern swung about six feet from his shoulder on a pole. His hope was that if anyone should shoot at the lantern he would not be hit. On one occasion a warm controversy between a lawyer for the defense and the prosecutor was mistaken by the courthouse audience for a quarrel which might develop violence. Immediately the courtroom bristled with pistols drawn from under-arm holsters.
It would seem to have been a fairly open-and-shut case, but it created a sensation, even when transferred to Harrison County and the court of Judge J.J. Osborne. For two hired guns, Jett and White were defended by a remarkable group of attorneys, including Judge B.F. French (a notorious survivor of the French-Eversole feud in neighboring Perry County), John O’Neal of Covington, Captain Ben Golden of Barbourville, prominent Republican James Black, J.T Blanton, and the firm of Rafferty and King.
Their efforts could not overcome the overwhelming evidence against the accused. Captain Ewen testified that he had seen Tom White pass him and Marcum in the courthouse doorway, staring at Marcum to make him turn so that he could be shot in the back. He also testified that after Marcum was shot, he (Ewen) turned and saw Jett holding a pistol in both hands and saw him take two steps forward and fire another shot through Marcum’s head, and that later he saw Jett come out the side door of the courthouse.
Other witnesses testified that Jett had been seen with White before the killing and that, after the two shots were fired, White was seen to motion to Jett in the side courthouse door, and that the two of them left hurriedly. It took the jury only a short while to bring in a guilty verdict. Both Jett and White were sentenced to prison for life.
Tried with them were Mose Feltner, John Abner, and John Smith. Feltner testified that he, Abner, and Smith had been hired by James Hargis, Ed Callahan, and Fult French to kill Marcum but had failed to do so. Abner and Smith supported his testimony. Charges against Smith were dismissed following his confession. He later became the bitter enemy of Ed Callahan and was suspected of an attempt to kill him. The others were acquitted.
Curtis Jett was only twenty-four at the time. Tall, red-haired, and blue-eyed, he had, according to reporter Tom Wallace, a mean, hard-eyed look, thin lips, and a short chin. He was a cousin of the Cockrell brothers but had been suspected of killing Tom Cockrell. Jett had an unenviable reputation. He had been in jail a half dozen times for shooting and disorderly conduct, twice accused of rape, and twice tried for shooting and wounding. In prison he proved to be an obstreperous prisoner until, according to his own testimony, he heard the call of heaven, accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, and “got religion.” He later became a preacher of sorts.
Judge James Hargis and Ed Callahan were indicted for complicity in the murder of J.B. Marcum but, after five trials, were acquitted. Interviewed by Tom Wallace, Hargis swore that he had nothing to do with any assassination and said that he did not approve of it “except when a man is so mean he deserves to die.”
“But who would be the judge?” asked Wallace.
“Who,” replied Hargis, “but them as knows him best?” That proved to be an ominous statement.
Though Hargis and Callahan escaped prison, Mrs. Marcum, widow of the slain J.B. Marcum, sued them for being instrumental in the death of her husband and was awarded eight thousand dollars by the court. They paid. If there was justice concealed in all this, it was well concealed.
The famed Hargis-Cockrell feud was, for all practical purposes, over. Two nights after Captain Ben Ewen testified against Curtis Jett, his home was burned. People in central Kentucky, led by the Louisville Courier-Journal, took up a purse to help him rebuild. He was also booked for a series of lectures in and around Cincinnati on the Breathitt violence, but drew smaller audiences than had been expected.
Judge Hargis at one point declared that he was sick of the violence that had marked his life and announced that he was preparing to sell his properties in
Breathitt County and move to Lexington. Speaking for himself and his brother Alex, he told the Lexington Herald: “We began our business twenty years ago poor men, and we have accumulated wealth and position by dint of our industry. We own thousands of acres of land in this county, and lands and stores in other places. We never had any difficulty in our lives and we had no motive to assassinate Marcum or Cockrell or anyone else. Marcum was as intense a Republican as his uncle, Bill Strong, and he was willing to go to any extremity to further the interest of his party.”
Ben Ewen announced that if the Hargises did move, he might go back to Breathitt to live. But before Hargis could move—if he had ever seriously contemplated moving—he ran into trouble at home.
Hargis’s son, Beach, was known as a bad drinker, erratic and probably unbalanced. According to Kentucky Reports (Vol. 135), Beach, on or about February 16, 1908, came into the Hargis store and asked a clerk to give him a pistol. The clerk refused but pointed out that there was a pistol in the drawer of his father’s desk. Beach took it and left but turned up the next morning with a badly swollen face, telling the barber into whose shop he stormed that “the old man hit me.” This would not have been startling news. His father reportedly had beat him regularly as a boy, and even after he was grown would whip him with a rope or a pistol, and once beat his head on the floor.
Beach drank a bottle of Brown’s Bitters, went to the drugstore of his brother-in-law, Dr. Hogg, and waved the pistol about, pointing it at several customers. He then went to his father’s store and took a seat in a chair near the door. His father, seeing him, said to another man in the room, “He has gotten to be a perfect vagabond, and he is destroying my business, and if Dr. Hogg lets him stay there he will ruin his business.”
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