The Hatfields and the McCoys

by Otis K. K. Rice

  More damaging evidence emerged concerning the motives and actions of Cline. G. W. Pinson, the clerk of the Pike County Criminal Court, swore that he had copied the indictments against the twenty West Virginians for Cline in order that Cline might induce Governor Buckner to offer rewards for their arrest and to make a requisition upon the governor of West Virginia for their delivery.

  Johnse Hatfield added details of the agreement with Cline. In a statement affirmed before John A. Sheppard, a notary public of Logan County, West Virginia, Johnse declared that he, with Auxier and James York, attorneys for the Hatfields, visited Cline in December 1887 and came to a verbal understanding with him. Johnse confirmed the earlier assertion of Auxier that the Hatfields had paid Cline $225 in return for which he was to endeavor to stop the proceedings for the arrest of Devil Anse and the others. He further stated that “it was well understood at the time of the making of said agreement by all parties interested that… Cline had not spent any such sum of money in the manner stated by him, but that it was only an excuse for him to take shelter behind.”12

  Whatever satisfaction the Hatfields might have gained from the promise of Perry Cline must have been at least partially offset by the address of Governor Buckner to the Kentucky legislature on the last day of December 1887. Sensitive to the adverse publicity which disorders in the mountain counties had brought to Kentucky, Buckner pointed out that “the reputation of a community is often popularly judged by the conduct of its worst elements” and that “the law-abiding character of the people of Kentucky [was] estimated by others, in a great measure, not from the general disposition of its citizens to obey the laws, but from the violent conduct of comparatively a few lawless individuals.” Buckner declared, “If, from neglect or inefficiency, we fail to repress this lawlessness, or to bring the offenders to justice, we have no right to complain of the false estimation in which we are held by the people of other states.”13

  Although the press of Kentucky hailed the governor’s address as holding out a promise of action against those who flouted the laws of the state, the Hatfields looked upon it as a threat. To them, it gave added evidence of collusion between Governor Buckner and men such as Perry Cline, whom they now considered the epitome of duplicity. If the governor attempted a serious assault upon the lawlessness in the eastern counties, the Hatfields indeed had reason for apprehension.

  7

  NEW YEAR’S DAY 1888

  UNTIL THE AUTUMN of 1887 the Hatfield-McCoy feud remained primarily a family vendetta, waged without effective intervention by the constituted authorities of either Pike or Logan counties. The election of Governor Buckner and his support of the proposals of Perry Cline, however, lifted the feud into the political sphere. Although Buckner’s motives were unquestionably altruistic, his intercession did not herald a new evidence of the majesty of the law or of swift and certain justice. Rather, through the machinations of Cline and his associates, it resulted in an infusion of the cheapest and most corrupt kind of politics. Other feuds of the Kentucky mountains had repeatedly shown that when legal authority failed to stand above the warring factions and arrayed itself on one side or the other, it intensified and prolonged the troubles. Without any doubt, the politicization of the Hatfield-McCoy feud and the efforts of Cline to turn it to personal advantage forced it into one of its most violent periods.

  Although the Hatfields had no confidence in Cline and other Kentucky authorities and little expectation of justice, much less of mercy, at the hands of a Pike County court, they might have done well to allow matters to settle for a time. Already Governor Wilson’s reaction to the letter of Frank Phillips and the reports of Cline’s venality held forth the possibility that he would not honor the extradition request from Kentucky.

  Moreover, the exposure of Cline’s duplicity might have undermined some of his influence with Governor Buckner. The threat remained, nevertheless, that Pike County friends of the McCoys or bounty hunters might engage in extralegal methods to arrest the Hatfields and take them to Kentucky for trial. The Hatfields had no intention of allowing that to happen.

  Early in the morning of a cold, crisp January 1, 1888, Devil Anse, Jim Vance, and Cap Hatfield decided to take the initiative. They dispatched Johnse and Tom Chambers, also known as Tom Mitchell, to round up the clansmen, some of whom, either because of fear of arrest or a desire to avoid further entanglement in the feud, were hiding in the hills. Johnses wife, Nancy, had left him, and he was temporarily free to participate in the activities of his family.

  The first recruit was the easily influenced Ellison Mounts, reputedly the son of Ellison Hatfield. Over six feet tall and weighing more than 180 pounds, the twenty-four-year-old Mounts seemed the archetype of the wiry, athletic mountaineer. With his light blond hair and dull gray eyes, he was generally called “Cotton Top.” His boyhood had been spent “in the usual pursuits of a rude, unrully [sic] country boy, in fishing, hunting, roving about the neighborhood and engaging with boon companions in Sabbath-breaking, petty pilfering, and all the multifarious pursuits known to the average ungoverned country boy.” Barely literate, his “education in vice” had been “very thorough,” and he participated in his first murder in 1882 after the McCoy brothers killed his father in the election-day troubles on Blackberry Creek.1

  At Dow Steele’s, on Island Creek, Johnse, Chambers, and Mounts met Devil Anse and his sons, Cap and Robert E. Lee, or Bob, who was a mere youth. According to Mounts, they continued on to the homes of Henry Vance, Floyd Hatfield, and other supporters and finally arrived at the cabin of Jim Vance. There Devil Anse, Cap, and Vance held a council and presumably came to the conclusion that they must eliminate Randolph McCoy and members of his family who might present damaging evidence against them if they were extradited to Pike County for trial. As Jim Vance explained, with agreement from Cap and Johnse, the Hatfields had “become tired of dodging the officers of the law, and wished to be able to sleep at home beside better bed fellows than Winchester rifles, and to occasionally take off their boots when they went to bed.”

  Once the plans were announced, the men unanimously expressed their willingness to participate in them. Ironically, the only one to hold back was Devil Anse, who declared that he was too sick to take part and that he would turn over the leadership to Vance. No one questioned the sincerity of Devil Anse’s explanation, and all agreed to accept Vance as their leader. Altogether, eight men placed themselves at Vance’s command. They included Cap, Johnse, Bob, and Elliott Hatfield, the last a son of Ellison and a nephew of Devil Anse, Tom Chambers, Ellison Mounts, Charles Gillespie, and French, or Doc, Ellis. Vance sought to impress upon his followers the importance of absolute fidelity to the plan. Raising his arms above his head, he declared, “May hell be my heaven; I will kill the man that goes back on me tonight, if powder will burn.”2

  With unity and firmness of purpose, the band of nine well-armed men advanced up the Tug Fork. Between four and five o’clock in the afternoon they stopped at Cap Hatfield’s for supper. Darkness was coming on fast, but a full moon appeared. Concealing themselves as much as possible, the men proceeded to Poundmill Run and crossed a ridge to Peter Branch and Blackberry Creek. Their route, almost identical to that taken by Wall Hatfield and the Mahon brothers the night following the attack upon Ellison Hatfield by the McCoys, undoubtedly brought back bitter memories and steeled them in their resolve to remove a potential threat to them. Passing Jerry Hatfield’s, the site of the fateful 1882 election, they swung up Hatfield Branch to the crest of a mountain and emerged on Blackberry Fork of Pond Creek. When they had gone about a mile, they tied their horses, and Cap, Johnse, and Vance put on masks. From there they advanced silently toward Randolph McCoy’s house, which stood on a flat of heavily wooded hillside.3

  According to the plan of attack, the nine men surrounded the McCoy dwelling, a double log house with a roofed passageway connecting the two parts. Cap and Mounts stationed themselves at the back door of the kitchen, and Bob and Elliott Hatfield covered the kitchen door tha
t opened upon the passageway. Johnse and Vance watched the entrance from the passageway to the main house, and Chambers, Gillespie, and Ellis stood guard over the front entrance.

  After they had taken their positions, Jim Vance called for the McCoys to come out of the house and surrender as prisoners of war. His demand awakened Calvin McCoy, the twenty-five-year-old son of Randolph, who was sleeping in the upstairs of the main part of the house. Calvin hastily put on his trousers and suspenders and hurried downstairs to warn his mother to remain quietly in bed. He then went back upstairs for a better vantage point for defense, while his father took up a position on the first floor.

  About that time Johnse, ignoring the orders of Jim Vance to withhold fire until he gave the signal, shot into the McCoy house. His precipitous action was followed by a fusillade from the attackers and answered by rapid firing by the McCoys from the windows, with Calvin “shooting like lightning.” Ironically, the first victim of the encounter was Johnse, who received a charge of bird shot in the shoulder.

  In the midst of the shooting, Jim Vance and Tom Chambers undertook to set fire to the house. Vance ran to a side of the building that had no windows, where he saw some cotton drying. He struck a match to it and placed part of it in a joist hole and the remainder against the shutter of the door. Chambers, observing the new tactic, dashed to the woodpile and seized a large pine knot, which he ignited. With the blazing pine knot, he ran to the kitchen area, where he leaped upon a pile of logs and onto the roof. There he attempted to pry loose a shingle, with the intention of placing the burning pine knot in the loft. Before he could accomplish his purpose, someone fired a gun from the room below, blowing a hole in the roof and momentarily blinding Chambers. When he regained his composure and his sight, he saw that his numb and bloody hand had three fingers missing. He dropped the torch, rolled to the ground, and sped off as fast as he could to safety. The pine knot fell to the ground and smoldered harmlessly.

  The fire that Vance had ignited at the door of the cabin, however, showed signs of spreading rapidly. Calvin McCoy called to his sisters, Josephine, Alifair, and Adelaide, to put it out, but Vance warned that if they came out he would shoot them. The girls tried to extinguish the flames with the water in the cabin, which they quickly exhausted, and then used the buttermilk in the churn, but to no avail. The fire spread and began to engulf the doorway.

  About that time Alifair opened the kitchen door. She beheld the masked men but called out to Cap Hatfield that she recognized his voice. Cap and Johnse saw her at the same instant and called to Ellison Mounts, who was nearest her, to shoof her. Mounts fired and the girl collapsed on the ground nea the doorway. Josephine called from the inside to ask whethe her sister was hurt, but the incomprehensible moans of Alifair left no doubt that she had been mortally wounded. Sensing some tragedy, Calvin called down to find out what had happened. His answer came in Josephines screams that the attackers had killed Alifair.

  Upon hearing that Alifair had been shot, Sarah McCoy, her mother, rushed to the back door. Vance commanded her to go back and raised his rifle as if he would shoot her too. Sarah saw, however, that he had the wrong end turned toward her and continued toward her dying daughter. Vance bounded toward her and struck her with the butt of the rifle. For a moment she lay on the cold ground, stunned, groaning, and crying. Finally, she raised herself on her hands and knees and tried to crawl to Alifair.

  According to Sarah McCoys own account, she pleaded with the attackers, “For God’s sake, let me go to my girl.” Then, realizing the situation, she cried, “Oh, she’s dead. For the love of God let me go to her.” Sarah put out her hand until she could almost touch the feet of Alifair. Running down the door-sill, where Alifair had fallen, was blood from the girl’s wounds. Johnse, who was standing against the outside wall of the kitchen, took his revolver in the hand which he could still use and beat Sarah over the head with it. She dropped to the ground, face down, and lay motionless.

  Meanwhile, the fire continued to spread along the front and one side of the larger cabin. By then nearly overcome with smoke and realizing that the situation for the family was desperate, Calvin descended the ladder to the lower story and told his father that he would make a run for the corncrib and hold off the attackers while Randolph tried to run past them to safety. Calvin never made it to the corncrib. Surmising his plan, the Hatfields concentrated a murderous fire upon him, and he, too, met his death.

  Calvin’s bold scheme enabled Randolph to escape from the burning house. Grabbing extra cartridges, the older man, still vigorous at sixty-two years of age, dashed through the smoke and into the nearby woods. Knowing that pursuit would be foolhardy, the Hatfields had to content themselves with a mission only half-accomplished. In their frustration, they set fire to the McCoy smokehouse, which was filled with fresh meat from the fall slaughtering. They retired from the scene, blaming Johnse’s impetuous firing for the failure of their plan and certain that the wrath of Randolph McCoy would now know no limits. Their new venture and the survival of witnesses left them more vulnerable than ever.4

  Dejected, the Hatfield party mounted their horses for the ride home. Charley Gillespie’s horse had broken loose during the attack, and he rode behind Cotton Top Mounts, who fainted from the loss of blood on the way. From the ridge above Blackberry Fork they could see the burning cabin and the trees outlined against the reddened sky. Faintly, in the distance, they could hear the wails of the McCoy girls, crying for help in their distress.

  Behind them the Hatfields left a scene of unmitigated horror. Calvin and Alifair lay dead, and Sarah McCoy remained unconscious. When Randolph McCoy emerged from a pigpen, where he had taken refuge, he saw that his daughters Adelaide and Fanny, who were seventeen and fourteen years old, had built a small fire to protect their apparently dying mother from the penetrating cold. Randolph found Sarah with her arm and hip broken and her skull crushed. He saw the dead bodies of Calvin and Alifair, the latter with her long hair frozen to the ground. Even a less vindictive man than he might have vowed revenge at such a sight.

  Shortly afterward neighbors, attracted by the fearsome nighttime fire, arrived at the McCoy homestead. They placed Sarah on a cot and carried her to the home of her son Jim, who lived about a mile farther down Blackberry Fork. A few days later they bore the bodies of Calvin and Alifair to the McCoy cemetery, where they laid the two most recent victims of the feud to rest beside their three brothers—Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph, Jr.—who had been buried in a triple grave less than six years earlier.5

  Left without a home and with sorrows and hatred weighing upon him, Randolph McCoy left Blackberry Fork. He moved Sarah, still valiantly clinging to life, by wagon to Pikeville and to the home of Perry Cline. There they found Rose Anna, who made the care of her mother her own reason for living. Two pictures of Randolph during the succeeding weeks have emerged. Truda McCoy describes him as a silent, morose, and broken man. Virgil C. Jones, however, states that, in contrast to the women of the family, who bore their grief in silence, “the wails of the father were uncontrolled” and that he frequented the streets of Pikeville cursing the Hatfields and threatening revenge. Perhaps both descriptions contain some truth, as both appear to be in keeping with aspects of McCoy’s character.6

  The violence of New Year’s night of 1888 diverted some of the attention of the newspaper press from other feuds of the Kentucky mountains. Attracted by the sensational aspects of the events, but lacking reliable information, the press seized with avidity upon grossly inaccurate and often totally unfounded rumors. The Louisville Courier-Journal of January 8, 1888, like other Sunday newspapers of the week following the attack upon the McCoy family, carried a brief account based upon a letter written to State Senator A. H. Stewart by a friend in Pikeville. The Courier-Journal declared, “It appears that in 1882 parties led by a man named Hatfield, abducted three boys named McCoy, and conveyed them to West Virginia. A reward was offered for the arrest of the Hatfield party, and one of the gang was captured, who is now in the Pike
County jail. On Sunday last others of the same party went to the residence of Randolph McCoy, in Pike County, and killed his wife, mother of the three boys mentioned, and his son, also set fire to the house, which, with its contents, was entirely consumed.”

  The newspaper article further stated, “Two little girls, daughters of McCoy, escaped, and succeeded in recovering the dead bodies from the flames. McCoy escaped in his night clothes under fire of the murderers, shooting as he went, but without effect so far as ascertained.” The account noted, “The Pikeville jail is strongly guarded, but fears were entertained at the hour of writing that an attempt would be made to release the member of the gang [Selkirk McCoy] confined there.”

  Although it provided more accurate background material, the Wheeling (West Virginia) Intelligencer of January 9, 1888, drew upon a dispatch from Catlettsburg, carried by the Cincinnati Enquirer, for an equally erroneous version of the attack upon the McCoy dwelling. “A few nights since,” the dispatch stated, “the Hatfield party visited the residence of Randolph McCoy and set fire to the house. Alafara, his eldest daughter, was the first to open the door and make her appearance, and in the glaring light she was shot dead by the fiends outside, who were concealed. His son Calvin next appeared, and he was shot dead. His wife made her appearance in escaping from the burning building and was shot through the head, and although she was still alive at last accounts she will die.” Adding to the errors and simplifications, the account further declared, “Randall M’Coy escaped from the burning house with his shotgun, and although a volley was discharged at him he escaped unhurt, and opened fire upon the attacking party. He is known to have killed one of the gang by the name of Chambers, and, it is said, shot Cap Hatfield in the shoulder, and putting the rest to flight. So ends the chapter.”