The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story

by Dean King

  In either case, the relative lack of sophisticated weaponry was indicative of just how slow “progress” was in coming to the region, despite its increased economic well-being. It was certainly a factor in the number of casualties suffered in the feud. Had they had better and more accurate guns, more people would have died.

  Firearms had evolved rapidly since the war. The original Winchester—the Model 1866 lever-action repeating rifle (like others, named for its introductory year), which fired multiple shots without requiring reloading—had changed gunfighting forever. The highly portable 1873 carbine with its short, twenty-inch barrel was so widely disseminated (to the tune of 720,000) that it has been called the gun that won the West. Colt adapted its Peacemaker revolver to fire the same ammunition, allowing those armed with both to carry only one type of cartridge. And everyone from buffalo hunters, Texas Rangers, and Canadian Mounted Police to Geronimo carried the ’76 Winchester, which celebrated America’s centennial with more potent firepower.

  But it was not so much rifle type as the fact that the Kentuckians outnumbered the Hatfields—by, depending on the account, up to three to one—that determined the outcome of this fight. Though four men had been shot, only Bill Dempsey, whose leg had been shattered, was immobile. Leaving him behind, the Hatfields retreated into the forest, making a run for the gap of Thacker Mountain. “We fled,” Harrison would relate pensively at the age of ninety-one, “leaving Bill Dempsey, a cousin of the father of Jack Dempsey, lying bleeding to death…. I couldn’t help him.”10

  But Dempsey was still alive. He dragged himself to a shuck pen and hid inside. French Ellis’s wife, Eska, heard him cry out deliriously for water and went to try to help him. But when she ran into the yard, the McCoys fired at her. She was forced to take cover behind a heavy wooden puncheon, though not heavy enough: the minié ball of a muzzle-loading rifle ripped right through it, barely missing her head.

  The Kentuckians entered Cap’s yard. Blankets, overcoats, and other discarded Hatfield possessions were strewn around the grounds. Big Jim called out that he had shot a man who was almost certainly too hurt to go far. The men found a trail of blood that led to the shuck pen. Inside, Bill Dempsey lay dying.

  “What’s your name?” asked Bad Frank.

  “Bill Dempsey,” he replied, holding up his hands. “I’m not armed, gentlemen, and am dying. Please don’t shoot me any more.” Bad Frank drew his pistol.

  “Don’t… don’t…,” Dempsey pleaded.

  Bad Frank abruptly put the barrel up to Dempsey’s neck. When his men saw what he was about to do, several jumped to stop him, but before they could, Bad Frank discharged the gun; the blast severed Dempsey’s head from his neck.11

  Another person—another innocent—had died in the Hatfield-McCoy feud. With the sharp smell of powder and new death in the air, Big Jim stared at Bad Frank. “The McCoys don’t want no cold-blooded murders laid at their door,” he said. The others looked on tensely as the two men squared off, hands on pistols. Finally, Big Jim’s brother Sam talked him down while Lark did his best to calm Bad Frank.12

  Dempsey was a law officer who had come there with arrest warrants for the Kentucky raiders and to prevent the type of violence that took his life. After this second murder that Bad Frank committed during his unsanctioned January raids in West Virginia, the pendulum of moral authority that had swung sharply the McCoys’ way after the rapacious New Year’s attack now reversed course.13

  On Wednesday, January 25, 1888, the Louisville Courier-Journal picked up a news story out of Cincinnati, noting that it was a “special from Catlettsburg” with reports fresh off the steamer Frank Preston from Pikeville. Entitled “Bloody War in Pike County,” it announced that “the war of extermination between the Hatfields and the McCoys is still going on in the wilds of West Virginia” and reported that the governor would be “asked to send troops to the mountain wilds to force a truce.” One subhead read: “Shot His Head Off.”

  The Courier-Journal reported Bad Frank’s inhumane and criminal dispatching of Dempsey, which, it noted, angered one of the posse so much that he returned home. What is perhaps most telling about the story, though, is how much it harked back to the Civil War enmity between the Confederate Hatfields of Logan County and the Unionist McCoys of Peter Creek: “The Hatfields were organizing for a raid over on Peter Creek… to murder people, burn property and kill stock,” the daily claimed, while “the Peter Creek guards, twenty strong, have now joined the capturing party, which now numbers forty odd, and are in hot pursuit of the Hatfields.” Twenty-three years after the close of the war, it was the same old story.

  In Kentucky, the report continued, the fear had spread well beyond Peter Creek. Pike County was feverish, “as the Hatfields have warned the people that they propose to kill them and burn their property. They have sent word that they intend to burn Pikeville, and extricate their… comrades, now in jail there.” The jail was currently heavily guarded around the clock, and the evening pickets continued. Moreover, Pike County judge Tobias Wagoner and county attorney Lee Ferguson were heading to Frankfort on board the steamer Frank Preston to ask the governor for protection and guns.

  Regardless of which side had the better weapons at Grapevine Creek, the battle set off an arms race. With the support of a council of Hatfields, Devil Anse instructed Cap to have Nan draft a letter to the makers of the Winchester in Springfield, Massachusetts, requesting the purchase of a number of guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and on January 24, officials from Pike County traveled to Catlettsburg and bought sixteen more .38 -caliber and .44 -caliber Winchesters.14

  IT MIGHT HAVE COME AS a surprise to readers of the local papers, but Devil Anse was not spoiling for a fight. The raids had deeply affected him. Crazy Jim was dead; Wall and others were in jail; and the entire family now felt threatened at all times, even in their own neighborhoods. Devil Anse was making plans not to attack Pikeville but to protect his family. He even went to Logan Courthouse to ask for help, but providing a standing border patrol to guard the Tug River, which could be crossed in many places, for months on end was not feasible.

  Randall also seemed stunned and confused by what fate had wrought. Just days after the killing of Crazy Jim, he told a reporter from Pittsburgh: “I used to be on very friendly terms with the Hatfields before and after the war. We never had any trouble till six years ago. I hope no more of us will have to die. I’ll be glad when it’s all over.” According to the reporter, Randall exhibited no signs of resentment. Instead, “he spoke like a man who had been bent and almost broken by the weight of his afflictions and grief.”

  Devil Anse discussed the situation with Major James A. Nighbert, a Logan Wildcats veteran, wealthy landowner, and leading citizen, as well as a friend. Nighbert offered to let him ride out the tide on his land on Dingess Run near Blair Mountain, where he could keep his family safe and where plenty of raccoon, turkey, and bear awaited hunting.15

  So worried was Devil Anse that he promptly began dumping his property at Grapevine Creek, the very lands that had once belonged to Perry Cline, whose actions had turned the course of the feud. Devil Anse was relieved to sell to a group of Philadelphia coal investors, though the next month Lee Ferguson would gloat to the Courier-Journal that he had received only seven thousand dollars for what was worth more than twice that (and would be worth five times more when the railroad arrived in a few years). But Devil Anse was in a hurry. Not only did he no longer feel safe along the Tug, but after the violence at Grapevine Creek, his creditors had suddenly come calling.16

  Cap also sold off his property—the property given to him by his father—took the eight hundred dollars he made from the sale, and headed off through the woods, careful to avoid anyone who could identify him. After walking for five days, he jumped a train in a place far enough away that he knew no one would be looking for him. He was headed for Texas.17

  Based on a complaint and information on oath from Constable Thompson, who had been present at the battle, and two others,
on January 24, a Logan County justice of the peace issued a warrant for the arrest of the Kentuckians who on January 19 did “felinnously, willfully, maliciously, deliberately, and unlawfully slay, kill and murder one William D. Dempsey.” The warrant named twenty-eight men: Frank Phillips; nine McCoys—including Randall, Big Jim, Sam, Squirrel Huntin’ Sam, Bud, Lark, and Paris—Perry Cline’s son Sink; and Jacob and Bud Hurley, among others. Thompson returned the warrant the next day, notifying Judge James Monroe Jackson: “Not found within my County nor State.”18

  “There were 28 of the McCoys and others all together indicted at Logan Courthouse,” wrote Squirrel Huntin’ Sam, who could not resist adding, “A hundred dollars apiece for each one. I did not know the boys were such cowards as they were until the detectives got to stirring around.” But they had good reason to be fearful.19

  ON JANUARY 25, Judge Wagoner and Lee Ferguson arrived in Frankfort to ask Governor Buckner for weapons and state troops to end the fighting in their county. Buckner refused, saying that a local military company led by responsible men should be enough to handle the situation. The Courier-Journal found his thinking “highly satisfactory.” A bill was proposed to allow him to immediately form six new state guard companies, one to be based in Pike County. But those opposing the idea insisted that the state should bear no expense beyond providing arms and ammunition for the troops.20

  Buckner was feeling pressure from both sides. On January 26, Governor Wilson sent him a telegram about the Dempsey murder and asked him to help stop the warfare. Buckner telegrammed back that he had heard a different account of the skirmish. Jockeying for the high ground, the two leaders busily drafted letters with an eye toward their future use in court.21

  The sensationalist press, in both state capitals and across the nation, only fueled the fire. The New York World proclaimed a “war of extermination,” predicting the Hatfields “will be wiped out.” The Wheeling Intelligencer cried foul at the World’s coverage: “When will our eastern contemporaries learn that Pike County is situated in Kentucky, and that the blood-thirsty ‘West Virginia Vendetta’ they prate about so much are Kentucky outlaws? Such publications… are doing this State much damage in more ways than one.” And the Louisville Courier-Journal lauded the Pike County posse, which “will not give up the chase till the last bird is bagged,” declaring that the locals were “greatly in need of a real, genuine, first-class hanging.”22

  West Virginia state guard units in several counties offered up their services by telegraph to Governor Wilson. On January 30, at Wilson’s request, the Goff Guard, with thirty-five men, and the Auburn Guard, with forty, set out from Ritchie County for Parkersburg, with plans to carry on to Charleston and leave from there the following morning for Logan County. Wilson also dispatched the Confederate veteran Colonel W. L. Mahon to investigate the hostilities.23

  After arriving at Logan Courthouse, Mahon paid a visit to several of the Hatfields and, echoing John B. Floyd’s opinion, found them to be “good, law-abiding citizens.” The colonel also talked to their neighbors and found that the Hatfields held their “respect and confidence.” Mahon rushed back to Charleston, reaching the capital on the afternoon of January 30, with good news: while he described a “tumult bordering on a genuine young war,” he noted that “peace has again been restored, and the belligerent parties on both sides have disbanded, and no further trouble is anticipated.”

  To Mahon, the “strangest part of the whole affair” was the “fact that the Hatfields and McCoys are related.” What caused the hostility, however, was no surprise to the Confederate veteran, who had surrendered at Appomattox and well knew how long the bitter feelings could last: The troubles, he reported, “began in the war.”

  Wilson, buoyed by the news, countermanded the order calling out the military and sent the Goff and Auburn guards back to their respective towns. The likelihood of a clash between the states over the feud dramatically decreased.24

  The same day that Mahon returned to Charleston, Judge John M. Rice, a pugnacious fifty-eight-year-old former two-term Democratic U.S. congressman, called upon Governor Buckner in Frankfort to dispel rumors that he refused to hold the upcoming session of court in Pikeville without the presence of the state guard. He assured the governor that he would personally convene the criminal court in Pikeville on February 27 and that “he would proceed to the discharge of his duty without fear.”25

  Buckner received another communication from Wilson that, in contrast to the blunt actions of the feud, was an obfuscatory masterwork of bureaucratic haze, the centerpiece being Wilson’s assertion that the application for the requisition “does not appear to be made or supported by any official authority of Pike County.” Buckner—the state’s chief executive—was dumbfounded. He immediately drafted a letter to refute this sophism, pointing out that the “Executive making the demand, must be the sole Judge of the circumstances under which it would be proper.” Furthermore, Wilson’s facts were plain wrong. The application for the requisition had indeed been made “by the County Judge of Pike County, indorsed [sic] by the Judge of the District Court, and urged by the Commonwealth’s Attorney of the district.”26

  Even as Buckner shaped his extensive response to Wilson, he dispatched Sam E. Hill, the state’s adjutant general, to Pike County to investigate the border war (and thus engendered, some say, the expression “What in the Sam Hill is going on?”). That morning, January 29, Hill had telegraphed the Lexington Guards to mobilize and prepare to deploy but then rescinded the order. He set out from Frankfort that night. After traveling some forty miles across the mountains, he caught up with Judge Wagoner and Lee Ferguson in Catlettsburg on the morning of January 30. Though rebuffed in their request for troops, they were returning to Pikeville with ten new Winchester rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition.

  The tension on the border was palpable. At the train depot, a West Virginian harangued the Pikeville men, shouting that Kentucky had invaded his state and murdered his fellow citizens. Ferguson, small but fearless, retorted that this was a “God damn lie” and that it was the West Virginians who had invaded Kentucky, torched its property, and committed cold-blooded murder. An angry crowd gathered, and it looked as though the two men would come to blows. But the West Virginian, seeing just how bad the odds were, made a hasty escape.27

  So raw were nerves in Pikeville that Hill authorized the formation of a state guard company there. Knowing the bellicose nature of his fellow Kentuckians, he cautioned them to use force only when ordered to by the civil authority to maintain “the peace and dignity of our Commonwealth.” Over four days, he sought out the most reliable sources and questioned them, he later told Buckner, to better understand the true details and origination of the hostilities. He did not have to travel to do so because the raids had caused many families to leave their homes near the Tug and take refuge in Pikeville. Hill also visited the county jail to confront Wall Hatfield. To his surprise, he found him affable and noted that he “deprecates with apparent sincerity what has been done.”

  Hill interviewed Sally McCoy, who was still recovering from her injuries, and her daughter Addie, whose frostbitten feet continued to cause her pain. They told him about the house raid. He was so moved that he “could not avoid weeping freely as the old lady detailed… the horrors of that terrible night.”28

  Buckner did not wait for the results of Hill’s investigation to dispatch a voluminous—two-thousand-word—response to Wilson. In addition to rebutting Wilson’s objections, he recapped the feud events and the correspondence between the two and urged his counterpart to issue the requested requisitions and turn over the wanted men. And so it went, letters back and forth, a diplomatic feud of its own, ink and rhetoric in place of gunpowder and lead.

  Among the new issues Wilson raised was the character of Perry Cline, who seemed to have extorted or been bribed by the Hatfields, an issue that Buckner tried to head off by noting that he already knew about Cline’s “efforts… to secure a withdrawal of the requisition and rewar
ds” in exchange for the wanted men’s promise not to enter Kentucky again, and that he had declined the “cool proposition.” The idea that Cline could be bribed by the Hatfields with several hundred dollars was unlikely. Perhaps it was a plot by agents of the Hatfields to muddy the waters. But even if they had managed to bribe Cline, Buckner argued, that was no reason to delay the issue of the requisition to the proper authorities, whose conduct was not in question.29

  Regarding the battle of Grapevine Creek, Buckner gave no ground, arguing that Phillips and his posse had been ambushed and had killed Dempsey in self-defense and that “Phillips, the agent appointed by me to receive the fugitives… is not the murderous outlaw your Excellency seems to suppose.” He acknowledged, however, that Phillips had arrested men in West Virginia without a warrant and agreed to designate another agent to receive the prisoners.30

  In the meantime, William Floyd, Governor Wilson’s emissary at the battle of Grapevine Creek, petitioned Wilson to release the West Virginia prisoners in Kentucky, maintaining that they had been “taken from the state without any legal process whatever, and in violation of the laws of the state.”31

  On February 2, Governor Wilson boldly turned the tables on his counterpart and dispatched Colonel W. L. Mahon, who had investigated the feud in person the previous week, to Frankfort to deliver requisition papers to Governor Buckner for the return of the illegally obtained prisoners. Three days later, Buckner gave his answer: No. It was a matter for the courts to decide, in this case, Judge Rice of the Pike County Circuit Court.32

  After a brief but intense stay in Pikeville, Sam Hill returned to Frankfort and wrote up his report, which he submitted to Buckner on February 7. The night before, he told a Courier-Journal reporter, “It is all a mistake about the feud having had its origin in war times. The Hatfields and the McCoys, so far as political faith goes, are members of the same party, and have always been such.” He blamed the fighting on Devil Anse, whom he called “a bold, bad man.”33 This discounting of the Civil War as the root cause of the feud was a misinterpretation that would be perpetuated. Hill did not seem to realize that a number of the posse hunting down Devil Anse, Crazy Jim Vance, and the other Hatfield combatants were the sons, nephews, and brother of Harmon McCoy and the sons of Asbury Hurley, men killed by Crazy Jim and Devil Anse in the war.