Bloody Breathitt
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58. Merrill, “The Invisible Empire,” 199.
59. Louisville Commercial, June 15, 1870.
60. LCJ, December 17, 1888.
61. Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky, 365.
62. Ibid., 364; Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 68.
63. NYT, December 15, 1878; Ireland, Little Kingdoms, 85–86.
64. Schulte-Bockholt, The Politics of Organized Crime and the Organized Crime of Politics, 201–4. For Max Weber’s definition of the state as an organization or body that holds a “monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory,” see From Max Weber, 78–79.
65. Preston, The Civil War in the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky, 86–91.
66. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 50; Blight, Race and Reunion, 53–54, 215–16, 382–83.
67. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 80–81.
68. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, p. 191.
69. Wm. M. Combs agst. Capt. William Strong, Wiley Amis and Other Defendants, 1867–1869; Wm. M. Combs agst. Hiram Freeman and Jason Little, 1867–1869; William Strong Sr. vs. Wilson Callahan & comp., May 15, 1867, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, KDLA.
70. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, pp. 20, 24, 58, 60, 66, 74, 80, 85, 87–89, 101, 110, 135, 165, 167, 223, 240, 292, 541, 569, 644, 647; Lewis Collins and Collins, Collins’ Historical Sketches of Kentucky, 214; Hardy, “Some Kentucky Lawyers of the Past and Present,” 310; interview with Judge Dickerson, March 9, 1898, JJDD, reel 2, p. 2172; Zachariah Frederick Smith, The History of Kentucky, 773–74 (quote), 802; Review of the Financial and Political History of the State of Kentucky, 16, 17; Decker and Jones, Knox County Kentucky History, 143; Hood, “For the Union,” 204–5, 208–12, 214–15; Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 56–57, 147; E. Polk Johnson, A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians, 768; Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin, Kentucky, 957–58; Speed, Pirtle, and Kelly, The Union Regiments of Kentucky, 84; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 54.
71. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 83–84 (quote), 92.
72. Interview with Samuel Strong Jr., July 1973, AOHP, no. 280, p. 4.
73. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 84.
74. LCJ, January 16, 1879.
75. Ibid.
76. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, pp. 8–9, 18, 170.
77. Ibid., 196.
78. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:18.
79. Ibid., 2:56; WPA, In the Land of Breathitt, 59.
80. HGH, May 10, 1894; Lexington Herald, May 2, 1897. James McPherson has suggested that martial participation has a politicizing effect, prompting many soldiers to conflate their initial individual or communal reasons for fighting with the war’s larger calling. Strong never testified as to his opinions on the Civil War’s “big picture,” but the war clearly established him as a leader (in James C. Scott’s phrasing, “beyond the visible end of the spectrum”) among Breathitt County’s black and white poor. It is doubtful that he would have come to this position without serving in the Union army. James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades; Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 183. For a similar argument, also see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen.
81. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:7; Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, p. 193.
82. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, pp. 192–93, 196.
83. Ibid., 192 (quote), 196.
84. Ibid., 18. Grant carried 25.5 percent of Kentucky’s votes; Shannon and McQuown, Presidential Politics in Kentucky, 42–44.
85. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, pp. 1–22; Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 21.
86. Poll results show that Democratic majorities in Breathitt County elections were permanently restored as of 1867. TAPR, 1869, 83; 1870, 60; 1871, 65; 1872, 71; 1873, 60; 1875, 91. Quote from E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:26–27.
87. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 104.
88. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, p. 194.
89. Ibid., 194.
90. Ibid., 196. For other accounts of William Strong and his militants being described as “Red Strings,” see LCJ, December 5, 1878, May 10, 1897; Hopkinsville Kentuckian, May 11, 1897; NYT, May 10, September 13, 1897; Columbus Enquirer, September 14, 1897; Lexington Herald, September 15, 1897; Washington Times, August 17, 1902; BCN, September 11, 1908; interview with Ebb Herald, 1973, No. 139, p. 5; interview with Harlan Strong, 1978, AOHP, nos. 279, 355, pp. 20–21; Luntz, Forgotten Turmoil, 58–59.
91. Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, p. 169.
92. The “red string” used by members as a discreet emblem of membership hearkened to the biblical account of the Israelites’ secret infiltration of Jericho and the red cord their collaborator, the harlot Rahab, displayed in her window to save her from slaughter. In North Carolina Red String members were said to display a small red thread on their lapel. There is no indication that Breathitt County’s did the same.
For more general descriptions of the group’s larger activities during the Civil War and Reconstruction (particularly in North Carolina), see NYT, April 29, 1867, March 11, 1871, January 31, 1882; New York Herald, October 6, 1867; “Midnight Gathering of a ‘Red String League,’ ” 115; New Hampshire Sentinel, March 16, 1871; Galveston News, July 31, 1872; Chicago Inter-Ocean, October 1, 1880; Raleigh News and Observer, July 27, August 25, 1882; Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 334, 354; Brinsley Matthews and Pearson, Mōnon Ou, 39; Edward King, The Great South, 493; Van Noppen, The South, 351; Baggett, The Scalawags, 91 (quote); Durrill, “Political Legitimacy and Local Courts,” 577–602; Scott Reynolds Nelson, Iron Confederacies, 102–3, 207; Scott Reynolds Nelson, “Red Strings and Half Brothers,” 37–53; Honey, “The War within the Confederacy,” 55–71; Noe, “Red String Scare,” 301–22; Escott, Many Excellent People, 64; Ellis, “The Bingham Family,” 14; Auman and Scarboro, “The Heroes of America in Civil War North Carolina,” 327–63; Trelease, White Terror, 338.
93. Van Noppen, The South, 351.
94. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 354.
95. Raleigh News and Observer, July 27, August 25, 1882.
96. Lexington Herald, May 11, 1897.
97. Interview with Melvin Profitt, August 11, 1975, AOHP, no. 164, pp. 6–7.
98. Interviews with Ebb Herald, 1973, and Harlan Strong, 1978, AOHP, nos. 279, 355, pp. 20–21.
99. Louisville Commercial, December 8, 1878.
100. Columbia Phoenix, July 13, 1870.
101. KTY, December 22, 1878; LCJ, January 16, 1879; interview with John Aikman, July 20, 1898, JJDD, reel 3, pp. 2412–13; Boston Globe, May 10, 1897; “A Kentucky Vendetta,” 3; Rolff, Strong Family of Virginia and Other Southern States, 93; Davison, Davi(d)son, 6. Callahan family history suggests that Wilson Callahan was killed by Hiram Freeman’s son William and William Strong’s son Flint around the same time. http://www.kykinfolk.com/breathitt/databases/edwardcallahan_mahalabrock/d3.htm (viewed March 1, 2011).
102. Richmond Climax, August 31, 1898.
103. Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 178.
104. Patrick A. Lewis, “The Democratic Partisan Militia and the Black Peril,” 146–49.
105. Louisville Commercial, December 28, 1870 (quote); McConnelsville Conservative, January 20, 1871.
106. LCJ, July 23–25, 1871. The Klan’s control over Estill County demonstrates how dramatically many previously loyal white Kentuckians became seriously aggrieved toward the federal government directly after the war. During the war Estill had been among the most pro-Union counties in the state. But in later years labor difficultie
s brought about by the entrance of cheap freedman labor in the county’s iron mines brought about a political sea change and a fierce local attempt to rid the county of its black minority. Dunaway, African-American Family, 247–48; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 55; Trelease, White Terror, 316.
107. NYT, August 25, 1871; Trelease, White Terror, 316.
108. Even for white southerners who had no involvement in the Klan’s original incarnations, the organization nevertheless “provid[ed] a model that other groups emulated.” The costume, iconography, and reputation of the Ku Klux Klan carried enough resonance among white southerners to be sustained even within movements that had little or nothing to do with enforcing white supremacy. The original program initiated by the Klan became conflated with numerous other causes. Holmes, “Moonshining and Collective Violence,” 592–93; Ireland, Little Kingdoms, 73–76.
109. G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 179.
110. NYS, May 2, 1897; Lexington Herald, May 2, 1897; interview with John Aikman, July 20, 1898, JJDD, reel 3, pp. 2412–13; interview with Edward Callahan Strong, July 21, 1898, JJDD, reel 3, pp. 2424–25; Washington Times, August 17, 1902; Lewis Franklin Johnson, Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials, 320; Vanatta, “On the Trail of a Mystery,” 18; Haney, The Mountain People of Kentucky, 77; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 147–48; Day, Bloody Ground, 126; Lawrence Sidney Thompson, Kentucky Tradition, 98; Billings and Blee, The Road to Poverty, 375; Pearce, Days of Darkness, 124. This discrepancy may have been due to a confusion of names. In 1867 Strong’s pro-Confederate uncle, also named William Strong (possibly Edward Callahan Strong’s father), sued Wiley Amis and Wilson Callahan for compensation for wartime confiscations (unlike his nephew, the senior Strong was actively pro-Confederate). William Strong Sr. vs. Wilson Callahan & comp., May 15, 1867, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, KDLA; Barnes vs. Adams, CSS, vol. 1432, no. 2, 41st Cong., 2nd sess., H. Misc. Doc. 13, p. 196.
111. Interview with Edward C. Strong, July 21, 1898, JJDD, reel 3, p. 2424; Pearce, Days of Darkness, 124; Billings and Blee, The Road to Poverty, 375.
112. In that year there were thirty-six reported lynching deaths in Kentucky, three reported as carried out for voting the Republican ticket. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 309–11.
113. “Kentucky’s Vendettas,” 259; Vanatta, “On the Trail of a Mystery,” 18.
114. Johnston, “Romance and Tragedy of Kentucky Feuds,” 554.
115. Winchester News, February 24, 1909.
116. Lewis Franklin Johnson, Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials, 320.
117. Blight, Race and Reunion, 383.
118. LCJ, January 6, 1879.
119. Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 40–54.
120. In an interview conducted by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Program, an elderly cousin of the judge humorously warned that if Edward Strong’s grave were disturbed, his ghost would return and “have mortgages on everything in Breathitt County.” Interview with William Haddix, 1938, Federal Writers’ Project (interviewer: Margaret Bishop), http://www.breathittcounty.com/BreathittWeb2/THaddix.html (viewed December 19, 2008).
121. KHJ, 1871, 438.
122. Morse v. South et al., Circuit Court D of Kentucky, April 15, 1897, The Federal Reporter, 80:206–18; HGH, May 10, 1894; G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 177.
123. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:26 (quote); AGACK: Regular Session, 1877–1878 (Frankfort: S. I. M. Major, 1878), 1:145; KHJ, 1878, 932; Morse v. South et al., Circuit Court D of Kentucky, April 15, 1897, The Federal Reporter, 80:208.
124. Morse v. South et al., Circuit Court D of Kentucky, April 15, 1897, The Federal Reporter, 80:208. Later in the 1870s Kentucky’s General Assembly passed an adverse possession law, making the legal recognition of old land titles even more difficult than it was already. Claimants who held the old eighteenth-century land grants like the one Jeremiah South had based his claim upon were saddled with a greater burden of proof in verifying ownership of land occupied or improved by alleged squatters. The General Statutes of Kentucky, 180–81.
125. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:26.
126. New York Tribune, August 1, September 30, 1874; LCJ, August 26, September 7, 16, 1874; CDT, September 9, 1874; NYT, August 6, 8, 12, 14–15, 23, 25–26, 29, 30, September 6, 10, 15, 28, October 12, 26, 1874; KTY, September 22, 1874; “Notes on Kentucky and Tennessee,” 148; James McPherson, “Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” 507–8; Wyatt-Brown, “The Civil Rights Act of 1875,” 769–70; Rable, But There Was No Peace, 120; Perman, The Road to Redemption, 138–41; Gudridge, “Privileges and Permissions,” 120.
In 1874 a Republican party boss in the Bluegrass town of Lancaster armed a number of local African American men in an effort to capture the Garrard County courthouse during a hotly contested election (local Democrats engaged the group in a weeklong gunfight, prompting the arrival of federal troops from nearby Fort Dick Robinson). After initially reporting a “terrible war between the whites and blacks” during the Lancaster riot, the Commercial assured readers that the riot was not between whites and blacks but that “the connection of blacks in the affair is purely from their friendship for the contesting parties” (this of course omitted the fact that Kennedy’s Democratic factions included only white men). When Lancaster’s 1874 election riot was recounted in the twentieth century, it had become the “Kennedy-Sellers feud,” and personal enmity between the two party leaders was accentuated over their political differences. NYT, August 26, 1873, August 33–24, September 1, 1874; LCJ, August 20–24, 1874; CDT, November 4, 1874; Louisville Commercial, August 22, 1874; Coates, Stories of Kentucky Feuds, 239–58; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 54–55.
127. NYT, August 20, September, 2, 4–5, 10, 12–13 15–18, 21, 23–26, 29, 1874; CDT, August 5, September, 5, 10, 15–18, 21, 25, 28, 1874; Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 84–85.
128. Chicago Inter-Ocean, September 19, 1874; LCJ, September 28, 1874 (quote); NYT, December 7, 1878.
129. NYT, September 15, 1874.
130. Ibid., September 19, 1874.
131. Ibid., February 10, 1874; Louisville Commercial, October 31, 1874; Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 124–28.
132. Tapp, “Three Decades of Kentucky Politics,” 106 (quote); Trelease, White Terror, 317. Leslie had supposedly bought an entire flatboat’s load of Breathitt County coal in return for its being “worked up” by a local canvasser. Leslie had made the promise flippantly but, when the mountaineer showed up in Frankfort with far more coal than Leslie wanted, the newly elected governor was obliged to fulfill his promise. SIJ, April 11, 1882.
133. Louisville Commercial, September 20, October 1, 13, 1874; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 25, 1874; NYT, September 28, 1874.
134. LCJ, September 16, 19, 1874; “Fayette Hewitt to His Excellency, Hon. Jas. B. McCreary,” “Legislative Document No. 14: QuarterMaster General’s Report, December 31, 1875,” KPD, vol. 3. (Frankfort: E. H. Porter, 1879), 5; Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 31.
135. LCJ, September 28–29, 1874; NYT, December 7, 1878; Ingmire, Breathitt County, Kentucky Death Records, 18.
136. LCJ, October 9, 1874.
137. Comm. vs. Freeman and others, November 19–21, 1874, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, box 4, bundle 1, KDLA.
138. LCJ, September 28, October 6, 1874.
139. George Noble described it: “In August, 1874, the same year, a storm came and blew all the corn flat to the ground when it was in roasting ears, and it made about one-third of a crop. The same fall the squirrels came through the country in great droves. They would swim the streams and eat the corn all along. They were travelling toward the Cumberland Mountains. They were thick all along the public road and in the mountains. I saw that there was a famine on hand in the country.” G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 150.
Using evidence from Breathitt County’s county court minu
tes from 1874, Altina Waller connects Strong’s 1874 attack on the courthouse to the county’s financial crisis, which was tied to the exoneration of some taxpayers’ debts, tax support for an approaching railroad, and a lawsuit against absentee landowners. Simmering war-born tensions between Democrats and Republicans, however, are not considered. Although the county’s declining economy (a decline that began the previous year during the nationwide Panic of 1873) probably exacerbated the Red Strings’ ire, newspaper accounts of Strong’s attack written by reporters who followed the state militia to Jackson agree that it was in reaction to William Hargis’s murder. Also, accounts of the affray from Democratic and Republican newspapers reveal that both recognized the party-based animosity in Breathitt County. Waller, “Feuding in Appalachia,” 365.
140. Foner, Reconstruction, 437; Higginbotham, Shades of Freedom, 88; Hubbs, Guarding Greensboro, 215–16; Lemann, Redemption, 6–7; Lane, The Day Freedom Died, 22.
141. NYT, September 26, 1874.
142. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 25, 1874; NYT, September 28, 1874.
143. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 6.
144. KTY, September 22, 1874.
145. Louisville Commercial, September 26, 1874. For the Commercial’s role as one of Kentucky’s only Republican newspapers in the 1870s, see Summers, The Press Gang, Newspapers and Politics, 209.
146. In July 1874 Jeremiah (or Jerry) Little engaged in a street fight with James Cockrell, Hiram Jett, and John Jett. Though Little reportedly killed John and seriously wounded Hiram, he too was wounded, and that fall (after regular courts had resumed following William Strong’s capture of the courthouse), Little sued Hiram Jett for $2,000 in damages for shooting him, leaving the former “incapable of hard labor.” The jury awarded him $280. Newspapers identified Little as the aggressor and reported the affray as part of a “family feud” without exploring its origins any further. Jeremiah Little vs. Hiram Jett and James Cockerill, September 1874–June, 1877, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, KDLA; Philadelphia Inquirer, July 24, 1874; New Orleans Times, July 24, 1874; HGH, February 2, 1887; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 148; Lewis Franklin Johnson, Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials, 321; Waller, “Feuding in Appalachia,” 355.