34. Lowell Harrison, “Taylor, William Sylvester,” 870.
35. KHJ, 1900, 46–52; KSJ, 1900, 60–66.
36. Hughes, Schaefer, and Williams, That Kentucky Campaign, 145; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 119; Klotter, William Goebel, 95.
37. When Kentucky’s Democrat-majority General Assembly “conced[ed] the mountain counties to the Republicans” in 1890, they created an “oversized” congressional district containing territories formerly controlled by different Republican bosses. The intended effect was that these preexistent machines would come into conflict, further weakening and isolating the Republicans. As demonstrated by the eventual election of William Bradley as governor and steady Republican legislative gains elsewhere, the strategy was not flawless. MVB, March 20, 1890, December 4, 1899, January 31, 1900; MSA, December 5, 1899; Hartford Herald, December 6, 1899; LCJ, January 26, 31, 1900; Washington Times, February 2, 1900; MVS, February 2, 1900; Caleb Powers, Appt., v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Kentucky Court of Appeals, LRA, 53:258–60; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 119, 167–76 (“conceding” on 168); Shannon and McQuown, Presidential Politics in Kentucky, 71.
38. Hartford Herald, December 6, 1899; LCJ, January 26, 1900 (quote).
39. LCJ, January 26 (quote), 1900; MSA, March 27, 1900; Richmond Climax, March 28, 1900; HMC, March 30, 1900; Crittenden Press, July 19, 1900.
40. LCJ, January 26, 1900; HVK, January 30, 1900.
41. Lexington Herald, January 26, 1900.
42. LCJ, January 31, 1900.
43. Blue-grass Blade, February 11, 1900.
44. HVK, February 2, 1900; Washington Times, February 2, 1900; William S. Taylor and John Marshall, Plffs. In Err. v. J. C. W. Beckham, Drt. Err., U.S. Supreme Court (argued April 30 and May 1, 1900), Supreme Court Reporter, Cases Argued and Determined in the United States Supreme Court, October Term, 1899, vol. 20 (November 1899–July 1900), 895; “Executive Order #I,” February 3, 1900, Papers of J. C. W. Beckham, Special Reports and Studies (Goebel Incident), box 1, folder 8, bundles 9, 12, KDLA; Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 450.
45. ACN, February 14, 1900.
46. Washington Times, February 2, 1900.
47. In 1912 James Gilbert, a Helena, Arkansas, sheriff’s deputy formerly of Breathitt County, confessed to being the triggerman in Goebel’s death twelve years earlier. Gilbert’s confession was made with his last dying breath after a gunfight. His confession was apparently not investigated. Washington Herald, February 16, 1912; MSA, February 21, 1912.
48. Proclamation of Governor Beckham, Governor’s Correspondence, Papers of Gov. J. C. W. Beckham, box 1, folder 1, bundle 16, KDLA; Howard v. Commonwealth, Kentucky Reports, vol. 18, part 1 (April 1904), 2–18; Powers, My Own Story, 122–23.
49. Breckinridge News, December 18, 1918.
50. AAC (1899): 409; Berea Citizen, April 29, 1909.
51. SIJ, March 27, 1900; Hartford Herald, April 4, 1900; Hartford Republican, April 13, 1900; MVS, May 18, 25, 1900; MSA, May 29, 1900; Bourbon News, June 1, 1900; Klotter, William Goebel, 113–14.
52. Beckham had taken the oath of lieutenant governor at the same time the dying Goebel took the governor’s oath. He took the oath as governor the following day just after Goebel’s passing. William S. Taylor and John Marshall, Plffs. In Err. v. J. C. W. Beckham, Drt. Err., U.S. Supreme Court (argued April 30 and May 1, 1900), Supreme Court Reporter, Cases Argued and Determined in the United States Supreme Court, October Term, 1899, vol. 20 (November 1899–July 1900), 1187–1212; “Executive Order #I,” February 3, 1900, Papers of J. C. W. Beckham, Special Reports and Studies (Goebel Incident), box 1, folder 8, bundles 8, 10–12, KDLA.
53. Fenton, Politics in the Border States, 44; Pearce, Divide and Dissent, 25.
54. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 377. A contemporary accusation of Goebel’s campaign “precipitating civil war” appeared in Louisville Dispatch, November 10, 1899.
55. Proclamation, Papers of J. C. W. Beckham, Special Reports and Studies (Goebel Incident), box 1, folder 8, bundle 12 (quote), KDLA; Klotter, Kentucky, 206.
56. Hughes, Schaefer, and Williams, That Kentucky Campaign, 256; MSA, March 27, 1900; Bourbon News, March 27, 1900; Richmond Climax, March 28, 1900; HMC, March 30, 1900; Crittenden Press, July 19, 1900; Hartford Herald, September 19, 1900; Caleb Powers, Appt., v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Kentucky Court of Appeals, LRA, 3:264.
57. Hughes, Schaefer, and Williams, That Kentucky Campaign, 312. This would have been the Clay County War fought between the hegemons of one county’s salt-extraction industry—one Democratic, one Republican. It was an old rivalry that did not come to physical blows until the election of Kentucky’s first Republican governor disrupted Clay County’s political status quo. Billings and Blee, The Road to Poverty, 291–92.
58. Earlington Bee, September 20, 1900; HGH, October 18, 1900.
59. For the problems surrounding the characterization of Goebel’s killers as “feudists,” see Williams, “Henry Shapiro and the Idea of Appalachia,” 353–54.
60. In John Fox Jr’s. fictionalized account of Frankfort in January 1900, published more than ten years later, Goebel’s death provided an ironic twist in the plot of an imaginary feud between the Hawns and Honeycutts in an unidentified mountain county. The threat posed by “the autocrat” (an unnamed fictionalized Goebel) necessitated the two families’ swearing “that they had buried the feud for a while and that they would fight like brothers for their rights.” Soon after, a member of each “clan” is implicated in the governor-elect’s murder. The communal conflict that had led to their initial division was subsumed by the political conflict that not only united them but prompted the Hawns and Honeycutts to engage the more modern world of the Bluegrass in a manner that bettered them with exposure to the “outside world” without stripping them of their native nobility and egalitarianism. The feud between the Hawns and Honeycutts had begun over small differences of a strictly personal nature; politics, the cause of the real-life ruptures that had been labeled as “feuds” years before, was instead treated as the force through which warring clans could be united against a common enemy worthier of their heretofore misplaced wrath. The ability of the Kentucky mountaineer to accept the progress of the outside world, rejecting communal violence while maintaining his nobler qualities, was a typical theme in Fox’s portrayals of the region. The use of a Goebel figure as the unseen antagonist in a Fox novel reflected the danger that mountain Republicans saw in his candidacy but, as a literary device, represented the overly bureaucratized republic’s loss of democracy that only the reinvolvement of the “pure” Anglo-Saxon yeoman could heal. In Fox’s (albeit patronizing) portrayal, published years after Goebel’s death, the “ignorant men” who occupied Frankfort in the winter of 1900 could be roughhewn heroes. Fox, The Heart of the Hills, 207. Fox was inspired to include a Goebel-like character in the novel after attending the governor-elect’s funeral. York, John Fox, 165–66. See also Satterwhite, Dear Appalachia, 55–87; Ayers, Promise of the New South, 364–65.
61. Hartford Herald, October 10 (quote), 1900; Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 132.
62. MSA, June 28, 1898; Lexington Herald, September 15, 1897, August 17, 1898.
63. SIJ, September 17, 1897; MSA, September 26, 1899.
64. NYT, September 15, 1897.
65. McAfee, Kentucky Politicians, 73–76.
66. Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 195.
67. Coates, Stories of Kentucky Feuds, 3.
68. Even as most Kentucky Democrats embraced free silver, it would seem that even the Democratic majority of Breathitt County favored maintaining the gold standard. MSA, June 2, 1896; HVK, June 2, 1896.
69. Richmond Climax, October 9, 1895.
70. HVK, June 23, 27, 1899; LCJ, February 6, 1908.
71. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 1:106.
72. Hartford Republican, September 13, 1899; Hughes, Schaefer, and Williams, That Kentucky Campaign, 108.
&n
bsp; 73. HGH, June 19, 1899.
74. Grantham, Southern Progressivism, 145–49.
75. TAPR, 1900, 82 (quote). For other characterizations of William Goebel as an anarchist, see also Hartford Republican, October 5, 1900; Klotter, William Goebel, 68.
76. HGH, June 19, 1899.
77. Lexington Herald, July 9 (quote), 1899; MSA, May 21, 1901, February 19, 1908; Coulter and Connelley, History of Kentucky, 3:611.
78. Lexington Herald, August 9, 15, 1899.
79. Ibid., November 12, 1899; NYT (quote), November 12, 1899; NYS, November 12, 1899; Hartford Republican, November 27, 1903. Bulldozing was a commonly used term for voter intimidation. Summers, Party Games, 102.
80. Lexington Herald, November 12, 1899; HVK, January 26, 1900.
81. NYS, November 12, 1899.
82. These were Lexington (Fayette County), Louisville (Jefferson County), Frankfort (Woodford County), and Goebel’s hometown of Covington (Kenton County). Earlington Bee, January 17, 1901; Hughes, Schaefer, and Williams, That Kentucky Campaign, 191.
83. Washington Times, November 10, 14, 1900.
84. NYT, November 10, 1900.
85. Breathitt County’s fusionists were not only using the same tactic employed by Populists a few years before, but were doing so out of a similar impulse. Before it became a national movement with faraway northern plutocrats as targets, Populism’s political manifestation had its beginnings in small farmers’ disgust with local courthouse elites. James Turner, “Understanding the Populists,” 367–68. See also Perman, Pursuit of Unity, 148–49, 166–69; Lester, Up from the Mudsills of Hell; Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 385–87; McMath, American Populism, 197, 203–6; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 42–46, 290–305; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 162–66; Uzee, “The Republican Party in the Louisiana Election of 1896”; de Santis, “Republican Efforts to ‘Crack’ the Democratic South,” 332–44; Kirwan, Revolt of the Rednecks, 99–100; Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina; Munroe Smith, “Record of Political Events,” 370; Haynes, “The New Sectionalism,” 275; LRA, n.s., 37:886–88.
86. Hartford Republican, November 27, 1903; LRA, n.s., 37:886–88.
87. HGH, October 14, 1892; MPL, November 27, 1895, June 19, 1899; Morse v. South et al., Circuit Court D of Kentucky, April 15, 1897, The Federal Reporter, 80:206–18; Speed, Pirtle, and Kelly, The Union Regiments of Kentucky, 257; LCJ, May 10, 1897; MSA, October 3, 1899; Lexington Herald, January 10, 1900; MPL, January 12, 1900.
88. E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:26; Charles C. Wells, 1890 Special Veterans’ Census for Eastern Kentucky, 222.
89. Kentucky Union Co., &c., v. Lovely, &c., March 14, 1901, in Reports of the Civil and Criminal Cases decided by the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 295–96; For Marcum’s representation of the L&E, see Biennial Report of the Bureau of Agriculture, Labor and Statistics of the State of Kentucky, 45; Lexington Herald, November 14, 1902; E. Polk Johnson, A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians, 1357; U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Experiment Stations, Organization Lists of the Agricultural Experimental Stations, 54; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 157.
For mountain Republicans’ abandonment of Civil War–era issues in favor of a more business-related identity, see John A. Williams, “Class, Section, and Culture in Nineteenth-Century West Virginia Politics,” 228; Snay, “Freedom and Progress,” 109–10; Gordon McKinney, Southern Mountain Republicans, 166–76.
90. Quoted in Lears, Rebirth of a Nation, 149.
91. HGH, May 10, 1894.
92. Richmond Climax, May 22, 1895; Aikman v. Commonwealth, March 17, 1892, SWR, vol. 18 (February 1–April 25, 1892), 937–38; Adkins et al v. Commonwealth, Court of Appeals of Kentucky, January 16, 1896, SWR, vol. 33 (December 30, 1895–March 2, 1896), 948–53.
93. Handbill: “Answer to Judge Hagins’ Circular,” Assorted Documents, Breathitt County Museum; Lexington Herald, July 9 (quote), 1899; MSA, May 21, 1901; Coulter and Connelley, History of Kentucky, 3:611.
94. HGH, October 17, 1901.
95. Pollard was often counsel for the Breathitt County court in higher courts. KLR, vol. 21, part 2 (January 1, 1903–June 15, 1903) (Frankfort: Geo. A. Lewis, 1903), 1406.
96. HGH, November 7, 1901.
97. Ibid., November 28, 1901; LRA, n.s., 37:886–89; LEP, May 19, 1903.
98. KLR, vol. 24, part 2 (January 1, 1903–June 15, 1903), 2498–2500; MSA, November 19, December 17, 1902; Lancaster Central Record, November 27, 1902; LEP, May 19, 1903; BCN, October 23, 1903.
99. Washington Times, August 17, 1902; LCJ, May ? 1903; Child, “The Boss of Breathitt,” 15.
100. HGH, February 27, 1902; Washington Times, August 17, 1902; Kash, “Feud Days in Breathitt County,” 344. Kash was personally acquainted with the Hargis brothers, Cox, Marcum, and most of the men involved in the conflicts of 1902 in Jackson.
101. Courtwright, Violent Land, 170; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 256–57.
102. HGH, February 6, 1902.
103. For a similar change in the character of violence in a newly factoried setting, see Carlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, 145–51.
104. Hartford Republican, June 27, 1902.
105. MPL, November 2, 1896; Lexington Herald, November 2, 3, 1896; Richmond Climax, November 4, 1896; Cardwell v. Commonwealth, Court of Appeals of Kentucky, June 23, 1898, SWR, vol. 46, 705–7; Washington Times, August 17, 1902.
106. Spout Spring Times, July 30, 1898; NYT, July 3, 1904.
107. SIJ, May 12, 1903; MSA, April 15, 1902; MVB, April 16, 1902; Blue-grass Blade, April 27, 1902; Washington Times, August 17, 1902.
108. Havens, Leiden, and Schmitt, The Politics of Assassination, 152.
109. Lexington Herald, April 15, 1902; MSA, April 15, 1902; MVB, April 16, 1902; HGH, April 17, 1902; Lexington Leader, July 21, 1902; Washington Times, August 17, 1902; LCJ, February 6, 1908.
110. MSA, April 15, 1902; MVB, April 16, 1902, May 9, 1903; Blue-grass Blade, April 27, 1902; “Telephone to Open Feud-Ridden County,” 196; Child, “The Boss of Breathitt,” 15; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 151.
111. Kash, “Feud Days in Breathitt County,” 344–45.
112. MSA, July 22, 29, August 5, 1902; CDT, July 22, 1902; Lexington Herald, July 23, 1902; Maysville Bulletin, July 23, 1902; Paducah Sun, July 24, 1902; MVS, July 25, 1902; Hartford Republican, July 25, 1902; ACN, July 30, 1902; LEP, May 4, 1903; Trimble, Recollections of Breathitt, 8.
113. MSA, July 22, 1902.
114. Hargis et al. v. Parker, Judge, et al., Court of Appeals of Kentucky, March 10, 1905, SWR, vol. 85 (March 15–April 19, 1905), 705.
115. Lexington Leader, July 21, 1902; LEP, May 4, 1903.
116. Paducah Sun, July 24, 1902.
117. Lexington Leader, July 24, 1902. Democratic attacks on fusionists were nothing unfamiliar, at least elsewhere in the South, most notably 1898’s White Supremacy campaign that precipitated the Wilmington Race Riot and guaranteed one-party dominance for at least a generation in North Carolina. Redding, Making Race, Making Power, 129–33.
118. Lexington Leader, July 24, 1902; Paducah Sun, July 24, 1902; CDT, July 30, 1902.
119. Lexington Leader, July 22, 1902.
120. For instance, the Herald admonished the Sunny South not to “prevaricate about the people of the mountains” and “stick to the truth” after it erroneously called Ben Hargis Judge Hargis’s son rather than his brother; HGH, July 17, 1902; Paducah Sun, July 24, 1902. In 1902 and for years afterward, the “Hargis-Cockrell feud” was only the most common descriptive for these events. Other variations included the “Hargis-Callahan feud,” the “Hargis-Marcum feud,” the “Hargis-Cockrell-Marcum feud,” and the “Curtis-Jett feud.” See Marcosson, “The South in Fiction,” 366; Green, Towering Pines, 91.
121. HGH, July 31, 1902.
122. Ibid., August 28, 1902; Lexington Leader, November 9, 1902.
123. Hargis attempted to have the case against Cockrell c
ompletely dismissed but, it being a criminal case, the specially appointed judge deemed a dismissal impossible. ACN, September 3, 1902; HGH, August 28 (quote), 1902.
124. Lexington Leader, August 27, 1902.
125. Ibid., November 14, 1902.
126. These papers were the Republican Louisville Evening Post and Lexington Leader and the Democratic Lexington Herald, Goebel’s most vocal enemy within his own party. Kash, “Feud Days in Breathitt County,” 345.
127. Paducah Sun, November 11, 1902; Alexandria Gazette, November 12, 1902; MVB, November 12, 1902; HGH, November 13, 1902; Lexington Leader, November 14, 1902; Lexington Herald, November 14, 1902; Lancaster Central Record, November 14, 1902; HVK, November 18, 1902; Hartford Republican, January 16, 1903. For Mose Feltner’s well-documented criminal history, see FRA, February 25, 1893; HGH, February 21, 1895, May 3, 1900; SIJ, February 28, 1896; MVS, May 4, June 29, 1900; HMC, November 16, 1900; MPL, November 9, 1900, July 20, 1901.
128. Lexington Leader, November 14 (quote), 1902; Lancaster Central Record, November 14, 1902; Berea Citizen, November 27, 1902.
129. Bourbon News, November 14, 1902.
130. Lexington Leader, November 15, 1902.
131. Ibid., November 16, 1902. According to later court testimony, Marcum expressed the same speculations to his wife’s sister. White v. Commonwealth, Court of Appeals of Kentucky, March 17, 1905, SWR, vol. 85 (March 15–April 19, 1905), 755.
132. Lexington Leader, November 16, 1902. See also Berea Citizen, November 27, 1902.
133. HVK, November 25, 1902; Lancaster Central Record, November 27, 1902.
134. LEP, May 4, 1903; LCJ, May 5, 7, 1903; Lexington Herald, May 5, 1903; HGH, May 7, 1903; NYT, May 5, 10, 12, 25, 31, June 5, 16, 18, 20, 28, 30, 1903.
135. LEP, May 5, 1903.
136. Child, “The Boss of Breathitt,” 15. It would seem that Marcum’s instincts were correct. Mose Feltner, Marcum’s client and a suspect in an unrelated murder, said that, after being hired by Judge Hargis to kill Marcum, he had a clear opportunity to dispatch his target but hesitated because “the women were around him” and “he had his little baby in his arms.” Washington Post, May 29, 1904. See also LCJ, May 4, 6, 1903.
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