The Intelligencer added that $2,700 in rewards had been offered for members of the Hatfield clan charged with the murders of the three McCoys in 1882 but that “no one seems anxious to take them, as they are strongly barricaded in the wilds of West Virginia.” Declaring that the outlaws had killed McCoy’s wife, three of his sons, and a daughter, the writer also speculated that “retributive justice is now likely to follow, as their last acts have stirred up that whole section,” but he observed that “if the Hatfields are ever taken, dead or alive, the men who undertake the job will experience some fun, as this set of West Virginia toughs is a determined and desperate band.”
Remoteness from the scene of the tragedy only partly explained the inaccurate stories carried by the press. One of the most erroneous accounts appeared on January 12, 1888, in the Big Sandy News of Louisa, Kentucky, the closest newspaper. It reported that it had received “reliable information” from Pikeville that “Cap Hatfield was killed and that John[se] Hatfield and other members of the gang were badly wonded [sic] by Calvin McCoy and his father.” It declared that Calvin “mortally wounded two of the squad before he was killed.” The article also carried the mistaken news that “A seventeen-year-old daughter of McCoy [Adelaide] has become insane over the awful affair” and that “One of Johns [sic] Hatfield’s arms was so badly lacerated and shattered that it has been amputated.” After the type for the article was set up, the editor added later information to the effect that Cap had not been killed, but he injected another error by declaring that Chambers, rather than Selkirk McCoy, was then under heavy guard in the Pikeville jail.
Just as Perry Cline’s activities introduced a political dimension to the Hatfield-McCoy feud, so the Hatfield attack upon the McCoys on the night of January 1, 1888, placed it in the journalistic sphere. The newspapers proved no more able than the politicians to bring truth to the surface and to promote a resolution of the turmoil that beset Pike and Logan counties. Yet, in the long run, both contributed to a conviction by the people that, for the good of the two states, the mountain dwellers would have to settle their differences by more peaceful means.
8
THE HATFIELDS ON THE DEFENSIVE
WITH MUCH OF Pike County seething with anger over the events of the night of January 1, Randolph McCoy demanded that Sheriff Harmon Maynard take action, but Maynard declined to go into West Virginia without extradition papers. Frank Phillips, however, was of different mettle. Sensing the support of the people and posing as a state agent armed with full authority, he organized a band of some twenty-seven men for a foray into Hatfield territory.1
Expecting a new effort on the part of Governor Buckner to extradite them to Kentucky, the principal leaders of the Hatfield clan took oaths before Justice of the Peace Joseph Simpkins that they were nowhere near the McCoy residence on the night of the attack. They hoped that affidavits setting forth plausible alibis would prevent Governor Wilson from honoring any requisition for their extradition. Devil Anse apparently felt deep concern for the fate of his two stalwarts, Cap, who, according to most accounts, had killed Alifair McCoy, and Jim Vance, who had beaten up her mother. Rumors also circulated that the three chief leaders of the Hatfields had attempted to save Cap and Vance by paying Ellison Mounts five hundred dollars for a confession that he had killed Alifair.2
Frank Phillips and his posse caught the usually wary Hatfields off guard. They concentrated their first efforts upon Cap and Jim Vance, who had gone to Vance’s home. The two men remained there longer than they had intended because Vance had become ill after eating raccoon meat, which his wife, Mary, had prepared. They set out for Caps residence, with Mary Vance walking along the trail ahead of them. At the crest of a hill, she shouted that she saw Phillips and “a whole passel” of men on the other side. Vance directed Mary to continue on, and he and Cap took cover behind large rocks. When Phillips and his men came near, they opened fire, emptying their guns in rapid succession to give the impression that they had several others with them. Phillips, also knowledgeable in the ways of mountain fighting, was not deceived. He and his posse spread out, and one of his men got a clear line on Vance and shot him in the stomach. Vance at once commanded Cap to flee to safety.
Taking no chances with the sly Vance, Phillips and his men closed in with caution. Phillips walked up to Vance and fired a bullet into his head. Newspaper accounts of the incident, based upon misinformation, reported that not only Vance but also Johnse Hatfield and Tom Chambers had lost their lives in the encounter.3
Following the death of Vance, the leaders of both sides pursued a policy of guarded aggressiveness. Phillips and his posse returned to the hills of Kentucky and ventured into West Virginia only in brief, daring raids. The Hatfields, as anticipated, swept up and down the banks of the Tug Fork but did not cross the river lest they provoke the dispatch of state troops into Logan County or alienate Governor Wilson.
On January 19 the opposing forces met in pitched battle on Grapevine Creek, a West Virginia tributary of the Tug Fork. Phillips and some eighteen men had returned to West Virginia for another raid when they encountered thirteen Hatfield partisans, led by a constable, J. R. Thompson, armed with a warrant for the arrest of the murderers of Jim Vance. The two parties rushed for cover behind rocks and began to fire furiously. The first man wounded was Bud McCoy, regarded as one of the most dangerous of his clan. Soon afterwards the McCoys claimed their first victim, young Bill Dempsey, who suffered a shattered leg. Dempsey crawled into a shuck pen and was calling for water when Phillips, Dave Stratton, Jim McCoy, and three other men began to abuse him. The youth told them that the sheriff had summoned him as part of a guard to pursue the Kentuckians, whereupon Phillips walked up close to Dempsey, “drew his revolver and shot his brains out with one shot.”4
Newspaper accounts embellished the battle of Grapevine Creek. Inaccurate and based upon the flimsiest of rumors, they informed readers that Phillips and his associates had robbed Dempsey of a silk handkerchief and $2.50 which he had in his pocket when he died; that Jim Vance’s killers had shaken hands over his dead body; and that Randolph McCoy had sent Cap Hatfield word that he intended to kill him, cut out his heart or a piece of flesh, and broil and eat it. The Wheeling Intelligencer declared that if “one half of the stories of brutality and murder are true, the case would seem to warrant the authorities of both states in taking hold and ending the trouble, even if it is necessary to call the state troops into action.”5
Despite the gory accounts in the press, Frank Phillips had reason for gratification. In his forays into West Virginia he and his men captured Wall Hatfield, a Logan County justice of the peace, Tom Chambers, Elias Mitchell, Andrew Varney, L. S. McCoy, a son of Selkirk, Moses Christian, Sam Mahon, Dock Mahon, and Plyant Mahon, who joined Selkirk McCoy in the Pike County jail. The Hatfields were stunned by the depletion of their ranks, and West Virginia offered rewards for the capture of Phillips and twenty-one members of his posse.6
The hostilities of the early weeks of 1888 broke up the already crumbling marriage of Johnse Hatfield and Nancy McCoy. Johnse, always one of the weakest of the Hatfields, could not resist the pressures to join them in their moves against the McCoys, and Nancy, high-spirited and determined, always remained loyal to her family. When they parted, Nancy returned to Kentucky with their two children. In time she went to Pikeville, where she met Frank Phillips, who had separated from his wife. Nancy and Frank found at once that they were kindred spirits and began to live together. About two months later, when they received their divorces, they were married.7
Meanwhile, Rose Anna began to falter. She continued to care for her mother, who had fainting spells and needed assistance in walking, but she herself grew more and more depressed. Sarah McCoy sent for a doctor, who found nothing wrong with her daughter. Rose Anna, however, continued to lose ground, and one day she slipped away into death, much to the shock of residents of Pikeville. Her family laid her to rest in the Dils Cemetery in Pikeville. Rose Anna, perhaps as much as her sister and four bro
thers who rested in graves on Blackberry Creek, was a victim of the feud with the Hatfields.8
In late January 1888 Pike County Judge Tobias Wagner and County Attorney Lee Ferguson, both instrumental in action by the state the previous autumn, went to Frankfort and requested Governor Buckner to protect the lives and property of Pike County residents. Buckner listened attentively to their plea, but he professed to see no provocation sufficient to justify the dispatch of state troops to Pike County. He advised that its citizens organize a local militia force, with responsible men in command, and expressed the opinion that this force, backed by civil authorities, would be adequate to deal with the situation.9
About the same time a delegation from Logan County presented Governor Wilson with a petition, signed by some of the most prominent men of the county, calling upon him either to provide troops to defend them or arms with which they might protect themselves. The petition drew attention to the recent deaths of Jim Vance and Bill Dempsey at the hands of desperados from Kentucky and pointed out that Dempsey was a sheriff’s deputy who was killed while attempting to discharge his official duties.10
Spokesmen for residents of Pike and Logan counties maintained that the disturbances involved more than a hard-core of feudists in the Hatfield and McCoy families. S. G. Kinner, the commonwealth attorney for the Sixteenth Judicial District of Kentucky, declared that each side in the feud then had about thirty men, most of whom were among the best people of their sections. He pointed out that the Hatfields were men of means and standing in their communities but noted for vindictiveness, while their Pike County adversaries included “as good people as you will find anywhere.” State Senator John B. Floyd of Logan County denied that the conflict was confined to the two families and contended that it had become essentially one between the civil authorities of Logan County and the murderers of Jim Vance. He declared further, “The Hatfields are not interested in the difficulty more than other citizens of Logan County and, while the McCoys are among the Kentucky men, they constitute but a small portion of the gang.”11
Floyd, whose family had been closely connected with the Hatfields and who himself lived for twenty years within eighteen miles of the principal feudists, also provided a history of the trouble between them and the McCoys. His account, printed in the Wheeling Intelligencer on January 27, 1888, stressed the Civil War origins of the vendetta. After detailing some of the main events in the increasing hostility between the two families, including the killing of Ellison Hatfield and three sons of Randolph McCoy, Floyd laid the blame for the resurrection of the troubles, which most people thought were over, squarely upon Perry Cline. He charged that Cline had deliberately looked up the old indictments against the Hatfields after six years and induced the governor of Kentucky to offer $2,700 in rewards in order that he might extract money from the well-to-do Hatfields as a price for getting the rewards withdrawn.12
While elements on both sides of the Tug Fork sought some political settlement of the Hatfield-McCoy trouble, newspapers continued to whip up public excitement with sensational articles. The Pittsburgh Times found events along the Kentucky-West Virginia border of sufficient interest to dispatch a correspondent, Charles S. Howell, to the scene. Howell spent three days in Pike County and returned with a one-sided version of the feud which he touted as a definitive account. Published as a five-column feature in the Times of February 1, 1888, his article contained more than a score of serious factual errors and highly garbled accounts of the troubles growing out of the election of 1882, the killing of Jeff McCoy, and other incidents in the feud. Reproduced in numerous other journals, his account did much to color popular views of the vendetta.
Howell succeeded in obtaining interviews with Randolph and Sarah McCoy and with the Hatfield partisans who had been captured by Frank Phillips and lodged in the Pike County jail. Howell had deep sympathy with the McCoys, whom he visited at their house in Pikeville, which he found almost devoid of furniture. The couple, he declared, showed “unmistakable evidences of the intensity of their sufferings.” Contrary to most descriptions of Randolph, he pictured “a man who had been bent and almost broken by the weight of his afflictions and grief,” but who had only once given any thought to retaliation. He quoted McCoy as saying, “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. Ill be glad when it’s all over.”
Howell painted a very different portrait of Devil Anse, whom he never saw. The leader of the Hatfield clan emerged as an absolute monarch who brooked no challenge to his authority and who cold-bloodedly embarked upon a war of extermination of the McCoys without any real provocation. The newspaperman blamed Devil Anse and his associates for the Hatfield-McCoy war, which he characterized as “simply a succession of cowardly murders by day and assassinations and house-burnings by night.”
Nor did Howell form a more favorable opinion of the West Virginians whom he visited in the Pikeville jail. “The prisoners,” he declared, “are good types of their locality. Old ‘Wall’ Hatfield is a tall, powerful, well-proportioned man. He has iron gray hair and moustache to match, while a pair of rough, shaggy eyebrows almost conceal eyes of a greenish gray that are forever evading the eyes of the person with whom their owner may be talking. Cool and self-possessed at all times, ‘Waif never allows himself to be led into making any entangling statements.” The Mahons, two of whom were Waifs sons-in-law, he reported as masters of “bravery and cunning.” Howell noted that Wall had not participated in the attack of January 1, 1888, and had advised against it. His refusal to take part had allegedly produced a breach between him and Devil Anse.
Howell evinced considerable admiration for both Frank Phillips and Perry Cline. “Frank Phillips has made himself so conspicuous in his efforts to capture and suppress the Hatfield gang,” he wrote, “that he has been removed from his position as Deputy Sheriff. The Sheriff of Pike County is Basil Hatfield, a connection of the heads of the Hatfield gang, and himself is charged with giving them aid and comfort in removing Phillips and substituting his own. Phillips, however, has been appointed agent of the Governor of Kentucky to recover the Hatfields, for whom requisitions were issued. He says he will capture them all eventually and do all in his power to bring about their punishment.” Howell described Cline as “the demon of the prosecution” and a man “prolific of resources, patient, brave and untiring.”
In concluding his story, Howell declared, “There is a gang in West Virginia banded together for the purpose of murder and rapine. There is also a gang in Kentucky whose cohesive principle is the protection of families and homes of men and women. An unresisting family has been deprived of five of its members, a father and mother of five of their children, their homes burned, their effects sent up in smoke, their little substance scattered to the wind, themselves forced out at midnight as wanderers on the bleak and inhospitable mountain side, almost naked in the blasts of winter. A mother stands by and sees her son killed before her very eyes without being allowed to speak to him. Farms are destroyed, religious meetings are broken up, men and women whipped, state and county elections interfered with and terror holds complete sway. To repress the gang that has committed all these crimes was the Kentucky gang organized. These are the gangs, their respective histories, objects and achievements.”
Newspaper accounts such as that of Howell undoubtedly exacerbated feelings of hostility between the two states in which the feud occurred. Even before the publication of Howell’s one-sided account, the Wheeling Intelligencer noted that, “with one or two exceptions, all the press dispatches relating to the matter which have appeared, have been sent from Kentucky towns.” It further declared that they had “a decided coloring in favor of the McCoy faction, and are evidently calculated to make it appear that the Hatfields are the aggressors. Pains are taken in the accounts sent out by these Kentucky corespondents [sic], also, to create the impression that the affair is a case of ‘West Virginia outlawry,’ much to th
e discredit of the State. The truth of the matter is that it is a Kentucky feud, and is the result of a difficulty which occurred at a local election between the rival factions in Pike county, Kentucky, some years ago.” The Intelligencer contended that there had been nothing in the events to justify such distortions by the press, which reflected unfairly upon West Virginia.13
By the end of January 1888 most of the blood in the feud had already been shed. What until then had been a vendetta between two relatively obscure Tug Valley families was by then, however, in the process of becoming an interstate cause celebre, a windfall for muckraking newspapers and magazines, and a conspicuous element in the legendry of the southern Appalachians.
9
THE GOVERNORS INTERVENE
EVENTS ALONG THE Tug Fork in January 1888 almost inevitably drew the governors of Kentucky and West Virginia more deeply into the problems relating to the feud. On January 9 Governor Buckner wrote Wilson that he had received reports of the attack upon the McCoys on the night of January 1 and inquired whether there was any good reason why the men indicted for the murder of the McCoy brothers in 1882 should not be rendered to Kentucky.1
Because of sickness in his family and his absence from office with the Board of Public Works, Wilson did not reply to Buckner’s letter until January 21. He reminded Buckner that more than five years had elapsed before any application had been made by Pike County officials for extradition of the men charged with the murder of the McCoys, that those charged had lived in the vicinity continuously, and that the application for requisition had not been supported by any official authority of Pike County. Nevertheless, he had directed the issuance of warrants for all the persons named with the exception of Elias Hatfield and Andrew Varney. Wilson suggested that “neither [Perry] Cline nor [Frank] Phillips, nor any of the persons engaged in the recent violations of the law, are proper persons to entrust with process of either Kentucky or West Virginia.” He requested Buckner to make further inquiry in order that warrants might be issued only against those for whom there was some evidence of guilt.2
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