AN ERA OF VIOLENCE
THE HOPES OF Devil Anse Hatfield that he might calm the volatile situation following the killing of Jeff McCoy by adopting a conciliatory attitude rested upon the assumption that the clan leaders themselves could control future events. The 1880s, however, brought unusual turbulence to Kentucky, with much of it rooted in Civil War and political discord, with whiskey acting as a catalyst for both. In many respects the Hatfield-McCoy feud was a manifestation of a deep political and social malaise that fostered widespread troubles in eastern Kentucky. Perhaps no clan leader such as Devil Anse could give complete assurances against further eruptions.
Until the late 1880s the vendetta between the Hatfields and the McCoys attracted little attention outside the Tug Valley. Even the murders resulting from the election of August 1882 received no special notice in the newspapers of Kentucky and West Virginia. Election-day violence, with fights, stabbings, and killings, was common in Kentucky and more or less accepted as an unfortunate concomitant of the democratic process. The Louisville Courier-Journal of August 8, 1882, in a roundup of election news over the state, reminded its readers that the mixture of politics and whiskey had proved as explosive as ever. Even in Lexington, the hub of the elite Bluegrass society, “King Whiskey held high carnival” and led to considerable fighting in the “ancient streets.”
Nor did the trouble between the Hatfields and the McCoys contrast sharply with conditions prevailing along the Kentucky-West Virginia border. An almost unrestrained lawlessness in parts of the Big Sandy Valley, including Lawrence and Boyd counties, as well as adjacent Carter County, led to the organization of a Regulator movement, which drew the support of some of the leading citizens. The Regulators succeeded in obtaining state troops and then voluntarily disbanded. The Greenup Independent declared, with satisfaction, “Inefficient men have been in office, the laws were not enforced and justice went by default, encouraging crime and iniquity, until the people, propelled by natural laws of reaction, put a stop to it.”
The newspaper reacted too swiftly. The Regulators had attracted, along with public-spirited citizens, “a band of cutthroats” who engaged in pillage, marauding, and even murder. When an attempt was made to lynch two prisoners confined to the jail in Catlettsburg, Judge George N. Brown directed their removal to Lexington and a change of venue to Carter County. As the prisoners were led onto a steamboat, an Ashland mob aboard a ferryboat fired upon the militia assigned to escort them to Lexington. The troops returned the fire, and the exchange left several persons on the ferryboat and others on the wharves wounded.1
Perhaps most residents of the Tug and Big Sandy valleys had greater concern about bands of criminals, which sometimes operated with impunity, than for the Hatfields and the McCoys, who usually molested only each other. The arrest of Steve and Charles Kelley at Ceredo, West Virginia, in March 1888, for instance, exposed a ring that had committed robberies and murders in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio over a period of several months with no real deterrence by authorities in any of the states.2
Other bloody vendettas of the eastern Kentucky mountains frequently eclipsed events along the Tug Fork. Breathitt County had a succession of feuds which kept it in a turmoil for a quarter of a century. Probably the first of them began during the Civil War, when John Amis and William Strong raised a company of Unionists in deeply divided territory. After Amis was killed in 1873, the feud “burned itself out,” but Strong soon entered into another with Wilson Callahan, which resulted in several deaths before Callahan’s assassination ended the trouble. As that vendetta drew to a close, the Jett-Little feud claimed public attention until it put an end to the lives of its principal participants. When Judge John Burnett was killed in 1878, allegedly by members of the Gamble and Little families, Judge William Randall of the criminal court of the district that included Breathitt County declared that he would see the assassins punished. He failed to intimidate the lawless elements, however, and a fight in his own court in which Bob Little was killed and another man was wounded broke up the session and put the judge himself to flight. Randall never returned to Breathitt County to hold court during his remaining tenure as a judge.
Worse disorders lay ahead for Breathitt County. On November 13, 1888, Circuit Court Judge Henry Clay Lilly wrote Governor Simon Bolivar Buckner that he would not attempt to hold court in Breathitt, Letcher, and Knott counties unless the governor provided a state guard/such as some of the previous judges had obtained. Lilly explained that the people were so divided that a sheriff’s posse could not maintain order. He declared that several persons charged with murder, including a brother of the sheriff and a son-in-law of the jailer, awaited indictments because witnesses feared to speak out. Jurors were equally cowed, and at the previous term of court four murderers had escaped justice because of hung juries.
Governor Buckner, in a letter of rebuke to Lilly, revealed a strong aversion to state intervention in the Kentucky mountain feuds. He declared that he failed to find, from Lilly’s statements or any other source, “an evidence of any organized opposition to the civil authorities” of Breathitt County. The governor reminded Lilly that “in a republic the employment of the military arm in enforcing the law is of rare necessity.” He pointed out that “the law invests the civil authorities with ample powers to enforce the observance of the law, and expects those officers to exert their authority with reasonable diligence. When this is done,” he wrote, “there is seldom an occasion when the military arm can be employed without bringing the civil authorities into discredit. When a people are taught that they are not themselves the most important factor in the conservation of order in society, and that they must depend upon the exertion of extraneous forces to preserve order among themselves, they have lost their title to self-government, and are fit subjects to a military despotism.”
The worst disorder in Breathitt County, known as the Hargis-Cockrell-Marcum-Callahan feud, had its origins in a political contest in which fusion candidates accused County Judge James Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan of stealing the election. Violent disputes resulted in warrants for the arrest of Hargis and John B. Marcum, an attorney for the fusionists. Hargis alleged that in arresting him Tom Cockrell, the town marshal of Jackson, and his brother James had drawn a gun on him and would have killed him had not Callahan intervened. Recriminations filled the air during the ensuing weeks, and violence erupted when Cockrell killed Ben Hargis, a brother of the judge, in a blind tiger saloon in Jackson. Cockrell gained strong support from Marcum, who volunteered to defend him, and Dr. D. B. Cox, Jackson’s most prominent citizen. Shortly afterward, Jerry Cardwell, also allied with the Marcum, Cockrell, and Cox faction, killed John (“Tige”) Hargis, whom subsequent evidence revealed at fault in the altercation.
In the wake of these events Judge Hargis surrounded himself with paid killers. Shortly afterward assassins cut down Dr. Cox, James Cockrell, and Marcum, whose death occurred in front of the courthouse, with Hargis and Callahan watching from a store across the street. For fifteen minutes Marcum lay bleeding before anyone summoned up the courage to attend him. After this reign of terror, state troops arrived. Their presence gave Captain J. B. Ewen, who was with Marcum at the time, the nerve to tell all he knew. On the strength of his testimony, Hargis and Callahan were indicted for murder, but both were acquitted. Hargis, whose near-absolute power in Breathitt County and gubernatorial connections seemed to give him immunity from punishment in Kentucky, was killed by his own son in 1908, and Callahan was shot from ambush in 1912.3
Meanwhile, Hazard, in Perry County, became the center of another feud known as the French-Eversole War. Benjamin Fulton French and Joseph Eversole, the chiefs of their respective clans, were prominent lawyers and successful in the mercantile business. Their trouble began in a business rivalry and a malicious report of a clerk in French’s store that French intended to kill Eversole. The two leaders began to gather their forces, made up not only of relatives but also of others to whom they promised employment and good wages. With the killing of Sil
as Gayhart, a French partisan, in an ambush involving at least a dozen white men and several blacks in the summer of 1887, the town of Hazard became an armed camp. After intermittent fighting, the two sides agreed to lay down their arms, with French surrendering his to the county judge of Leslie County and Eversole placing his in the custody of Josiah Combs, the judge of Perry County, who was his father-in-law.
The armistice proved of short duration. Before long French charged that Eversole was repossessing the weapons that he had deposited with Judge Combs. On September 15, 1887, Eversole and his men waylaid and killed the Reverend Bill Gambriel, a French supporter, who “would fight at the drop of a hat and drop the hat himself.” Several members of the Eversole faction were indicted for murder, but only one was tried, and he was eventually acquitted.
After a relatively calm winter, violence flared up again on April 15, 1888, when members of the French forces attempted an ambush of Joseph Eversole, Judge Combs, and Combs’s nephew, Nick, as they journeyed to the regular term of the circuit court. The Eversoles, led by John Campbell, thereupon placed patrols in the streets and around the town of Hazard and ordered them to shoot anyone who attempted to enter without a secret password. Sporadic killings, nevertheless, continued.
Upon instructions from the governor, Kentucky Adjutant General Sam E. Hill visited Hazard in November 1888. He reported that the population of the town, normally about one hundred, had dwindled to about thirty-five as a result of the tension. Hill found that although he could obtain a fairly accurate account of the killings, he could not say what the feud was all about. He declared, without equivocation, that the failure of authorities to act with promptness and decisiveness at the inception of the troubles had allowed them to get out of hand. Moreover, despite the fact that Eversole and his friends appeared to be the aggressors, the county judge had refused to issue warrants for their arrest, and the two sides sought safety “in arming such persons as would take service with them.”
On the basis of his findings, Hill ordered a company of militia to Hazard to protect Judge Lilly’s court. As soon as the militia were removed, violence broke out again, and arsonists burned the courthouse. At a special term of court, held in August 1890 in a large tent, Lilly, again supported by troops, stiffened his attitude. As soon as the grand jury made indictments, he ordered the transfer of the prisoners to the Clark County Circuit Court for trial. By removing the trial from the scene of the disorders, the court broke the back of the feud. The only flare-up afterwards came in 1894 with the assassination of Judge Combs.4
The troubles between the unschooled Hatfields and McCoys in the mountain recesses of the Tug Valley hardly appeared exceptional when compared with the feuds that raged in the seats of Breathitt and Perry counties between prominent political and business figures. None of them excited the concern at the state level that arose from the Tolliver-Martin-Logan vendetta, which made a shambles of law and order in Rowan County.
The Rowan County troubles had their origin in a political contest in 1874 in which young Thomas F. Hargis, a former Confederate captain and a Democrat, ran against Republican George M. Thomas for judge of the circuit court. Opponents of Hargis charged that he was neither old enough nor had the experience required by law for the position. When Hargis tried to produce proof, he found the entry concerning his admission to the bar cut from the record book at Morehead and data concerning his birth missing from the family Bible. He accused his political enemies of the excisions, and they charged that he himself had removed the evidence. Hargis lost the election by twelve votes in a race which left the county deeply scarred and divided. In 1876, however, he won election to the newly created Circuit Court of Kentucky, and three years later he succeeded Judge J. M. Elliott as a member of the Appellate Court of Kentucky.
Political tensions generated by the 1874 election continued to stimulate election-day troubles. On August 1, 1884, Floyd Tolliver, a resident of Farmers, near Morehead, shot and wounded John Martin, the son of a prosperous Rowan County farmer. A battle ensued in which Solomon Bradley, an innocent bystander, was killed and Adam Sizemore was wounded. Sheriff John C. Day was charged with the shooting of Size-more. Without delay, the Tolliver, Martin, Sizemore, and Day factions began to line up supporters.
The following December, Floyd Tolliver and John Martin met in a barroom. A fight took place, and Martin killed Tolliver. Fearing that a mob might try to lynch Martin, the county attorney arranged for his transfer to the Clark County jail at Winchester. After unsuccessful efforts to have Martin returned to Morehead, A. M. Bowling, a Tolliver kinsman who served as town marshal of Farmers, and four deputies presented a forged document to the jailer at Winchester and prevailed upon him to release Martin to their custody. A short time earlier Martins wife had visited her husband and assured him that Rowan County officials would not ask for his return. When the eastbound Chesapeake and Ohio train left Winchester, Bowling had Martin aboard. As soon as the train pulled into Farmers, Craig Tolliver, a brother of Floyd and the recognized head of the Tolliver clan, boarded it with a large party and killed Martin. Only when she heard the commotion did Martin’s wife, who returned home on the same train, realize what had happened.
In the weeks that followed, members of the Martin faction shot from ambush and wounded County Attorney Z. Taylor Young, whom they accused of being pro-Tolliver. Acting in revenge, Tolliver supporters killed Deputy Sheriff Stewart Baumgartner in almost the same spot. In April 1885 the Martins, led by Cook Humphrey, and the Tollivers, led by Craig, took up positions in Morehead and engaged in a battle that raged for hours and left the town and the county in a state of anarchy. Adjutant General John B. Castleman, with state troops, restored order and summoned leaders of the two factions to Louisville, where they agreed to a truce.
The compromise lasted but a few weeks. An unsubstantiated confession by an associate of Humphrey that the family of John Martin had hired him to kill Young and that Humphrey and Baumgartner had arranged details of the plot stirred up trouble again. The Tollivers kept Humphrey and the Martins, who vehemently denied the charges, under close surveillance. In July 1885 they fired into the Martin house near Morehead, killed one of the defenders, and flushed out Humphrey, who miraculously escaped injury although the attackers shot off most of his clothes.5
After further troubles, Judge Asher C. Caruth persuaded Humphrey and Craig Tolliver, the recognized leaders in the war, to leave Kentucky permanently. Humphrey, who until his term as sheriff had been outside the feud and widely respected, left and never returned. Tolliver, however, came back to Rowan County, where he gained control of the courts and the grand juries, made Morehead a wide-open town for whiskey, gambling, and other crimes, and instituted a reign of terror. He forced enemies of the Tollivers to leave Morehead, the population of which dropped from seven hundred in 1885 to less than three hundred in 1887, with some of the most respected citizens in the exodus.6
Craig Tolliver made a fatal mistake when, at his instigation, a sheriff’s posse killed twenty-five-year-old Billy Logan and his eighteen-year-old brother Jack, who lived a few miles from Morehead. The cruel slaughter of the two young men and the burning of their cabin aroused the anger of their cousin, young D. Boone Logan, a quiet, cultured attorney of Rowan County. Boone Logan himself received a warning from the Tollivers to leave, coupled with an insulting promise that they would provide his wife with employment as a domestic in order that she might support their children.
Logan took the matter to Governor J. Proctor Knott, who explained the constitutional and legal barriers to his rendering any assistance. The young attorney allegedly then told the governor, “I have but one home and but one hearth. From this I have been driven by these outlaws and their friends. They have foully murdered my kinsmen. I have not engaged in any of their difficulties—but now I promise to take a hand and retake my fireside or die in the effort.”
Boone Logan succeeded where seemingly stronger men had failed. He purchased Winchester rifles, pistols, and shotguns, with adequat
e ammunition, and had them shipped under the label of sawmill equipment to Gates station near Morehead. Quietly he then gathered his forces and on June 22, 1887, engaged the Tollivers in open battle in Morehead. At the end of two hours of fighting, Craig Tolliver lay dead, and most of his associates were either killed or wounded. Logan thereupon took control of the town and held it until state troops arrived. The battle was the last bloody clash between the opposing factions in Rowan County. Several of Logan’s associates were indicted for murder, but all were acquitted by a Fleming County jury. Logan himself was never tried.7
In 1888 an investigating committee of the Kentucky General Assembly visited Morehead. Its report, which traced the origins and development of the feud, declared that between August 1884 and June 22, 1887, twenty murders and assassinations had taken place and sixteen other persons had been wounded in the county. Yet, “during this period there was not a single conviction for murder, manslaughter or wounding, except for the killing of one Hughes, who was not identified with either faction.” Moreover, the committee found scores of persons charged with selling liquors without license, carrying concealed deadly weapons, disturbing religious worship, and other breaches of the peace, who had never been arrested or who had posted worthless bonds.
The investigators declared that “county officials were not only wholly inefficient, but most of them [were] in the warmest sympathy with crime and criminals,” even going so far “as to rescue criminals from the custody of the law, being totally oblivious to their duty to the commonwealth.” They singled out Circuit Court Judge A. E. Cole for censure, for his leanings toward the Tolliver side in the feud, but they admitted that “any Judge in the Commonwealth could not have enforced the law in that county.” A proposal for the abolition of Rowan County and attaching parts of it to adjacent counties, however, failed to muster the necessary legislative support.8
The Hatfields and the McCoys Page 5