The Hatfields and the McCoys

by Otis K. K. Rice

  Several witnesses spoke in Wall’s defense. Jack Puckett testified that Wall did not get into the line formed at the Reverend Anderson Hatfield’s in response to the command of Devil Anse. The minister himself stated that Wall had urged the McCoy boys to go into town immediately after their arrest lest the Hatfields descend upon them and that Randolph McCoy, his son Jim, and one other person had responded that the McCoys had axes and other things to fight with. John C. France remembered Wall’s promising that not “a hair on their [McCoy] heads should be hurt here,” while Daniel J. Wolford asserted that Wall had stopped Bill Tom Hatfield and others from killing the McCoy brothers on Mate Creek. Finally, John Scott swore that Jim McCoy himself had said that Wall did not have time to get more than “fernent” the place where his brothers were shot.

  Frank Phillips testified that he arrested Wall at his home in West Virginia. On the day of the arrest he and Jim McCoy received a letter from Wall stating his willingness to surrender and asking that he not be taken until just before the convening of the court. Phillips, who was then within three miles of Wall’s house, ignored the request and made the arrest. Wall accompanied him to the residence of the Mahon brothers. Phillips stated that he took Wall to the Pike County jail and received the jailers receipt for him. Following the testimony of Phillips, Andy Casebolt confirmed that he was present when Wall talked with Sarah McCoy and that he remembered her saying that she believed she recalled Tolbert’s request that they be considerate of “Uncle Wall.”2

  The jury found Wall guilty and recommended life imprisonment. When the judge refused to grant a motion for a new trial, Wall appealed the verdict on the ground that it was against law and evidence, that the jury had not received proper instructions, and that the jurors had not been kept together after their impanelment. Judge John M. Rice, on September 5, 1889, suspended judgment for sixty days and proceeded with the trials of the other defendants. Alex Messer, Dock Mahon, and Plyant Mahon were tried simultaneously, and all received sentences of life imprisonment.3

  In addition to the trial of those indicted in 1882 for the murder of the McCoy brothers, eight of the Hatfields and their friends were indicted on August 24, 1888, for the murder of Alifair McCoy during the attack on the McCoy family on January 1, 1888. They included Cap, Johnse, Robert, and Elliott Hatfield, Ellison Mounts, French Ellis, Charles Gillespie, and Thomas Chambers. Gillespie demanded and received a separate trial. Mounts, however, had already confessed that he killed Alifair and entered a plea of guilty. On September 4 the jury returned a verdict of guilty and recommended the death penalty. Mounts attempted, through W. M. Connolly, his court-appointed attorney, to withdraw his plea of guilty. He contended that he had expected mercy in return for his confession and that the tearful testimony of Sarah McCoy had aroused the “passions and prejudices” of the jury against him “to a degree beyond their natural reasoning powers” and resulted in a more severe penalty. He hoped that a fair and impartial trial would extend his life “until the great and good giver of all lives shall take it away.” Judge Rice refused Mounts’s request and directed that he be confined to the Pike County jail until December 3, when he should be hanged.4

  Only one of the defendants in the murder cases made a statement at the time of sentencing. When Alex Messer heard the judge sentence him to “hard labor for the period of your natural life,’” he rose and, addressing the bench, declared, “Hit’s mighty little work I can do, Jedge. Hain’t been able to work none o’ any ‘count for several years.” Messer’s plaintive statement injected a note of unintended humor into the grim proceedings of the court, and the judge had to rap for silence.5

  At five o’clock in the afternoon of September 5, the day sentences were pronounced, three carriages left Pikeville with all the condemned men except Ellison Mounts. Guarded by twenty-five mounted citizens, the procession moved across rugged mountain terrain to Prestonsburg, where Sheriff W. H. Maynard, who was in charge, picked up a rumor that Cap Hatfield and a band of Knox countians might attempt a rescue of the prisoners. Maynard hastened the men on to the town of Richardson and placed them aboard a train on the Chatteroi Railroad. He and three guards, C. T. Yost, Jim McCoy, and Frank Phillips, continued with the prisoners to Ashland, where they entrained, by way of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, for Lexington.

  At Ashland, Phillips spotted James Vance, the son of the leader of the same name who had met his death at the hands of a Kentucky posse, and made gestures of friendship. The younger Vance, however, carried deep hatred in his heart and would have assaulted Phillips had others not restrained him. Maynard placed Wall Hatfield and Dock and Plyant Mahon, who had been granted appeals, in the Lexington jail and continued on to Frankfort with Alex Messer.6

  The hopes of the condemned men faded on November 9, 1889, when the Kentucky Court of Appeals rendered its decision. It declared that “to find … a more inhuman murder we must leave our civilization and resort to the annals of savage life. It is needless, however, to comment on the enormity of the crime or the helpless condition of the young victims of this murderous band. The law has been enforced in these cases, and in its administration the appellants can truly say the jury inflicting the punishment by imprisonment for life ‘had tempered justice with mercy.’ The judgment of conviction as to each one of the appellants is affirmed. “7

  Ten days later Devil Anse himself appeared in the United States District Court at Charleston, West Virginia, on a moonshine charge, which, strangely enough, had connections with the feud. In May 1889 Dave Stratton went to Charleston and presented evidence to a grand jury which resulted in Devil Anse’s indictment. Stratton and some of the detectives hoped to force Devil Anse to make a trip to Charleston and to intercept him en route.

  The federal judge, John J. Jackson, Jr., commonly known as the “Iron Judge,’” recognized the danger which Devil Anse faced. A member of one of the most distinguished families of West Virginia and a relative of Judge William L. Jackson, who proved so effective in Breathitt County, he had a reputation as a choleric, opinionated man. With his arching forehead, deep-sunken and piercing eyes, hooked nose, and long gray whiskers, Jackson represented the very epitome of determination and decision, and his confrontation with Devil Anse promised to be a memorable occasion.

  As so often happens, these two strong men of very different backgrounds treated each other with respect. Having no alternative except to summon Devil Anse to Charleston, Jackson sent his chief marshal, Columbus, or “Lum,” Sehon, to assure him that he would have protection during his journey not only against his enemies but also against detectives who aspired to capture him. Much to the surprise of many people, Devil Anse received the marshal with courtesy and agreed to appear in court if he could provide his own guard, a condition which the astonished marshal readily accepted.

  During his stay in Charleston and the trial Devil Anse found himself treated more as a visiting dignitary than as a man charged with a federal offense. Sehon, keeping his promise, provided a special guard both inside and outside the courtroom, but the Hatfields kept their weapons by their sides at all times, even during the trial. Curious spectators, who came to see the legendary clan leader, found, to their surprise, not an uncouth mountaineer but a benign-looking old man dressed in a navy blue suit, a blue shirt with open collar, and trousers stuffed into the tops of his half-length boots.

  Pleased with the attention that he received, Devil Anse gave an interview to a reporter for che Wheeling Intelligencer. He began his narrative with his enlistment in the Confederate Army, mentioned his service as leader of a Home Guard unit in which some of the McCoys then allegedly trying to kill him had served under him, and declared that the Hatfield and McCoy families had been good friends until the controversy over the hog. According to the reporter, Devil Anse stated that Ellison Hatfield had sworn out a warrant for Paris and Sam McCoy, who had killed Bill Staton following the incident. Accounts of the relations of Johnse with Rose Anna and Nancy McCoy, the murder of the three McCoy brothers, and other aspects of t
he feud, however, were at such variance with the facts and with Devil Anse’s knowledge of events that one can only surmise that the reporter hopelessly garbled his information.

  The close of the trial, which lasted only one day, brought a new excitement, for many spectators knew that both state officials and detectives hoped to capture Devil Anse the moment federal authorities released him. To prevent such a move, Judge Jackson decreed that no state official should lay a hand on Hatfield and directed the federal marshal to provide enough deputies to assure Devil Anse safe conduct until he left the railroad at Logan. Jackson then declared, “When Hatfield gets back to his home, I certainly have no objection to any of you arresting him who may want to try it,” a remark which brought a roar of laughter at the expense of the enemies of the patriarch of the Hatfield clan.8

  Meanwhile, Ellison Mounts, confined to the Pike County jail, granted an interview to a reporter, which appeared in the Wheeling Intelligencer on October 21. The reporter found Mounts loquacious and cooperative. He quoted the condemned man as saying, “I don’t blame the McCoys. The Hatfields brought me to this.” Mounts stated that he saw the three McCoy brothers shot and witnessed the attack on the McCoy family at their home. He insisted, “My guilt was not as great as Alex Messer’s, or Wall Hatfield’s, or the Whitts’, who turned state’s evidence.” Then, in words that had more of the ring of phrasing of the reporter than of the uneducated Mounts, he complained, “Yet my life pays forfeit, while they are permitted to live. No, I do not look for a commutation of sentence. Nobody seems to be doing anything for me.”

  Except for the interview with Mounts and the trial of Devil Anse, very little news came out of the feud country. Reports that Julia Ann McCoy and John Hand, a relative of the Hatfields, had been shot at their own wedding proved patently untrue, as did a story that a mob had organized to lynch Sam Mahon, whose illness had resulted in a postponement of his trial. Similarly, efforts of some newspapermen to connect disturbances in Lincoln County, West Virginia, with the Hat-field-McCoy feud lacked credibility. Major J. C. Alderson, who visited Lincoln County in November 1889, declared that all the reports from that quarter were false and that there was no more peaceful locality in the United States. Alderson considered the attempt to relate the alleged troubles there with the Hatfield-McCoy vendetta “absurd.” He correctly blamed much of the misinformation and wild rumor on “penny-a-liners at Huntington, Charleston and other points,” who had taken advantage of the eastern press and who deserved exposure. He failed to recognize, perhaps, that the Hatfield-McCoy feud had gripped the imagination of the American people and was already on the way to becoming a part of the mythology of the southern Appalachians.9

  13

  THE WAR SPIRIT ABATES

  MANY RESIDENTS of both Pike and Logan counties predicted that the Hatfields would never suffer Ellison Mounts to die on the gallows. His execution was originally scheduled for December 3, 1889. Under Kentucky law, however, Mounts automatically had thirty days to file a petition for a rehearing, but he filed no petition. On the evening of December 17 Governor Buckner set the hanging for February 18, 1890. The delays in the execution and the appearance in Pikeville in late January of mysterious strangers, who claimed to be tracing persons illegally cashing checks and horse thieves, strengthened expectations that the Hatfields would attempt to rescue Mounts.1

  Sheriff Maynard had deep suspicions of Mounts. When, toward the end of January, Mounts refused to talk or eat, his friends insisted that he had lost his mind and that Maynard should summon a jury to determine his sanity. Maynard considered Mounts’s behavior a ruse to postpone the hanging and rejected the suggestion. Mounts apparently took no interest in the visits of Dr. J. W. Glover, a physician and pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, who held services and tried to persuade him to prepare to meet his Maker. On February 17 Mounts expressed a desire to see the scaffold on which he was to be hanged, but the sheriff, fearing another device for a possible escape, refused his request.2

  Meanwhile, the first hanging in Pikeville in more than forty years attracted crowds estimated at from four to eight thousand persons. Spectators began to arrive on Sunday, February 16, and for the next two days arrived in droves. On the morning of an unusually warm February 18 Frank Phillips provided preliminary excitement. Already intoxicated for the occasion, he staggered about the streets of Pikeville, with a revolver in each hand, proclaiming that he had dealt with the Hatfields and that now he would run Pikeville. Sheriff Maynard failed in his efforts to restrain Phillips, and officers were forced to disarm him. Several of his friends, including Bud McCoy, also intoxicated, then tried to rush the officers and knocked Maynard to the ground. Fortunately, twenty-five militia arrived and restored order.

  A few minutes after noon Maynard appeared at the jail with the death warrant for Mounts, who stoically puffed a cigar and blew smoke rings into the air while it was read. After a prayer by the minister, a guard of twenty-four men led Mounts to a waiting wagon, seated him on a coffin box beside Dr. Glover, and conducted him through the town to the waiting scaffold. In accordance with Kentucky law, which forbade public hangings, Pike County authorities had erected a fence around the scaffold, but they circumvented the law by placing the structure at the base of a hill, from which crowds of curious people could obtain a clear view of the execution. They evidently intended that Mounts should serve as an example to others.

  When Mounts had taken his place on the scaffold, Deputy Sheriff Weddington asked if he desired to make a statement. Mounts said simply that he was ready to die and that he hoped that his friends would be good men and women and meet him in heaven. His last words, uttered as a black cap was pulled over his head were, “They made me do it! The Hatfields made me do it!”3

  The hanging of Ellison Mounts produced the inevitable barrage of rumors, many of them ludicrous in the extreme. According to one story, Mounts had lost his mind and the state had hanged a crazy man. Another alleged that the Hatfields had bribed the jail cook to poison the guards in order that Mounts might escape but that the cook had succeeded only in poisoning the jail cat. Yet another reported that the new governor of West Virginia, A. Brooks Fleming, had promised Lee Ferguson that he would honor all requests made by Governor Buckner and would, if necessary, call out the entire State Guard to capture the Hatfields. Fleming flatly denied the report and stated that he had never seen Ferguson. Nevertheless, the Louisville Courier-Journal declared that the governor of West Virginia was ready to surrender Devil Anse, Johnse, and Cap Hatfield to Kentucky authorities in return for the delivery of Frank Phillips and Bud McCoy by Governor Buckner.4

  Perhaps the most exciting of the reports that circulated in the wake of the hanging of Mounts concerned the alleged killing of Frank Phillips by Colonel William O. Smith. According to the story, Phillips met Smith, a former Confederate officer known as “Rebel Bill,” who was sawing lumber for the Norfolk and Western Railway, and accused him of killing Phillips’s father during the Civil War. When someone subsequently entered Smith’s bedroom and tried to kill him, suspicion fell upon Phillips. Although Phillips insisted that he was fifteen miles away at the time of the attack, Smith, so the story went, attempted to serve a warrant on him, and when Phillips resisted, Smith shot him. One version of the story had the killing of Phillips on Peter Creek on April 19 and another placed it on John’s Creek on April 20. Some said that the warrant was issued by Governor Buckner, who had honored a request from Governor Fleming for the extradition of Phillips. The excitement subsided when a United States deputy internal revenue collector arrived in Charleston on April 23 with positive evidence that Phillips was alive and Colonel Wallace J. Williamson, who had been attending court in Logan, declared that Smith had been there on both of the days when the alleged killing occurred.5

  Two events of May 1890 centered around men identified with the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Charles Gillespie escaped from the Pike County jail and made his way to West Virginia, never again to return a prisoner to Pike County, and Dave Strat
ton, who had reputedly shaken hands with Frank Phillips over the dead body of Jim Vance, met his death. On the morning of May 15 Mrs. Stratton found her husband not far from their house, unconscious and suffering from deep head wounds and a badly bruised chest, from which he died soon afterward. Most people immediately assumed that he had fallen victim to Hatfield vengeance.

  Detective W. J. “Kentucky Bill” Napier, who heard of Stratton’s death, hurried from Charleston to Brownstown, present Marmet, West Virginia, and swore out warrants for Devil Anse, Cap, Johnse, and Elliott Hatfield and three other men, all charged with complicity in the murder of Stratton. Napier, however, had rushed to conclusions, for it soon became known that Stratton had fallen under the wheels of a Chesapeake and Ohio Railway train while returning home in the dark in a state of intoxication.

  Napier himself became the subject of wild rumors. For several weeks after he went to Logan County, nothing was heard of him except a report that he had been seen in Racine, in Boone County, and in Kanawha County. In July the press wires out of Charleston reported that his body had been found within half a mile of a Hatfield home, presumably that of Devil Anse, and that he had a bullet through his heart. About two weeks later, however, a newspaper correspondent in Oceana, Wyoming County, West Virginia, stated that Napier had appeared before a grand jury there in connection with a moonshine case and that, after being assaulted by two friends of the defendants, he had been rescued by local police and then left town.6

  In contrast to the insatiable demand of the press for news, the Hatfield and McCoy families by 1890 showed signs of becoming weary of the feud. In September the Huntington Times reported, “The famous Hatfield-McCoy feud is at an end. After partaking in the bloody butchery of all the men they could kill, after living as outlaws, with prices on their heads, defying arrest and courting meetings with their enemies, after seeing their young men shot down, their old ones murdered, with no good accomplished, they have at last agreed on either side to let the matter rest/’