The Hatfields and the McCoys (7 page)

The armistice proved of short duration. Before long French charged that Eversole was repossessing the weapons that he had deposited with Judge Combs. On September 15, 1887, Eversole and his men waylaid and killed the Reverend Bill Gambriel, a French supporter, who “would fight at the drop of a hat and drop the hat himself.” Several members of the Eversole faction were indicted for murder, but only one was tried, and he was eventually acquitted.

After a relatively calm winter, violence flared up again on April 15, 1888, when members of the French forces attempted an ambush of Joseph Eversole, Judge Combs, and Combs's nephew, Nick, as they journeyed to the regular term of the circuit court. The Eversoles, led by John Campbell, thereupon placed patrols in the streets and around the town of Hazard and ordered them to shoot anyone who attempted to enter without a secret password. Sporadic killings, nevertheless, continued.

Upon instructions from the governor, Kentucky Adjutant General Sam E. Hill visited Hazard in November 1888. He reported that the population of the town, normally about one hundred, had dwindled to about thirty-five as a result of the tension. Hill found that although he could obtain a fairly accurate account of the killings, he could not say what the feud was all about. He declared, without equivocation, that the failure of authorities to act with promptness and decisiveness at the inception of the troubles had allowed them to get out of hand. Moreover, despite the fact that Eversole and his friends appeared to be the aggressors, the county judge had refused to issue warrants for their arrest, and the two sides sought safety “in arming such persons as would take service with them.”

On the basis of his findings, Hill ordered a company of militia to Hazard to protect Judge Lilly's court. As soon as the militia were removed, violence broke out again, and arsonists burned the courthouse. At a special term of court, held in August 1890 in a large tent, Lilly, again supported by troops, stiffened his attitude. As soon as the grand jury made indictments, he ordered the transfer of the prisoners to the Clark County Circuit Court for trial. By removing the trial from the scene of the disorders, the court broke the back of the feud. The only flare-up afterwards came in 1894 with the assassination of Judge Combs.
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The troubles between the unschooled Hatfields and McCoys in the mountain recesses of the Tug Valley hardly appeared exceptional when compared with the feuds that raged in the seats of Breathitt and Perry counties between prominent political and business figures. None of them excited the concern at the state level that arose from the Tolliver-Martin-Logan vendetta, which made a shambles of law and order in Rowan County.

The Rowan County troubles had their origin in a political contest in 1874 in which young Thomas F. Hargis, a former Confederate captain and a Democrat, ran against Republican George M. Thomas for judge of the circuit court. Opponents of Hargis charged that he was neither old enough nor had the experience required by law for the position. When Hargis tried to produce proof, he found the entry concerning his admission to the bar cut from the record book at Morehead and data concerning his birth missing from the family Bible. He accused his political enemies of the excisions, and they charged that he himself had removed the evidence. Hargis lost the election by twelve votes in a race which left the county deeply scarred and divided. In 1876, however, he won election to the newly created Circuit Court of Kentucky, and three years later he succeeded Judge J. M. Elliott as a member of the Appellate Court of Kentucky.

Political tensions generated by the 1874 election continued to stimulate election-day troubles. On August 1, 1884, Floyd Tolliver, a resident of Farmers, near Morehead, shot and wounded John Martin, the son of a prosperous Rowan County farmer. A battle ensued in which Solomon Bradley, an innocent bystander, was killed and Adam Sizemore was wounded. Sheriff John C. Day was charged with the shooting of Size-more. Without delay, the Tolliver, Martin, Sizemore, and Day factions began to line up supporters.

The following December, Floyd Tolliver and John Martin met in a barroom. A fight took place, and Martin killed Tolliver. Fearing that a mob might try to lynch Martin, the county attorney arranged for his transfer to the Clark County jail at Winchester. After unsuccessful efforts to have Martin returned to Morehead, A. M. Bowling, a Tolliver kinsman who served as town marshal of Farmers, and four deputies presented a forged document to the jailer at Winchester and prevailed upon him to release Martin to their custody. A short time earlier Martins wife had visited her husband and assured him that Rowan County officials would not ask for his return. When the eastbound Chesapeake and Ohio train left Winchester, Bowling had Martin aboard. As soon as the train pulled into Farmers, Craig Tolliver, a brother of Floyd and the recognized head of the Tolliver clan, boarded it with a large party and killed Martin. Only when she heard the commotion did Martin's wife, who returned home on the same train, realize what had happened.

In the weeks that followed, members of the Martin faction shot from ambush and wounded County Attorney Z. Taylor Young, whom they accused of being pro-Tolliver. Acting in revenge, Tolliver supporters killed Deputy Sheriff Stewart Baumgartner in almost the same spot. In April 1885 the Martins, led by Cook Humphrey, and the Tollivers, led by Craig, took up positions in Morehead and engaged in a battle that raged for hours and left the town and the county in a state of anarchy. Adjutant General John B. Castleman, with state troops, restored order and summoned leaders of the two factions to Louisville, where they agreed to a truce.

The compromise lasted but a few weeks. An unsubstantiated confession by an associate of Humphrey that the family of John Martin had hired him to kill Young and that Humphrey and Baumgartner had arranged details of the plot stirred up trouble again. The Tollivers kept Humphrey and the Martins, who vehemently denied the charges, under close surveillance. In July 1885 they fired into the Martin house near Morehead, killed one of the defenders, and flushed out Humphrey, who miraculously escaped injury although the attackers shot off most of his clothes.
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After further troubles, Judge Asher C. Caruth persuaded Humphrey and Craig Tolliver, the recognized leaders in the war, to leave Kentucky permanently. Humphrey, who until his term as sheriff had been outside the feud and widely respected, left and never returned. Tolliver, however, came back to Rowan County, where he gained control of the courts and the grand juries, made Morehead a wide-open town for whiskey, gambling, and other crimes, and instituted a reign of terror. He forced enemies of the Tollivers to leave Morehead, the population of which dropped from seven hundred in 1885 to less than three hundred in 1887, with some of the most respected citizens in the exodus.
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Craig Tolliver made a fatal mistake when, at his instigation, a sheriff's posse killed twenty-five-year-old Billy Logan and his eighteen-year-old brother Jack, who lived a few miles from Morehead. The cruel slaughter of the two young men and the burning of their cabin aroused the anger of their cousin, young D. Boone Logan, a quiet, cultured attorney of Rowan County. Boone Logan himself received a warning from the Tollivers to leave, coupled with an insulting promise that they would provide his wife with employment as a domestic in order that she might support their children.

Logan took the matter to Governor J. Proctor Knott, who explained the constitutional and legal barriers to his rendering any assistance. The young attorney allegedly then told the governor, “I have but one home and but one hearth. From this I have been driven by these outlaws and their friends. They have foully murdered my kinsmen. I have not engaged in any of their difficulties—but now I promise to take a hand and retake my fireside or die in the effort.”

Boone Logan succeeded where seemingly stronger men had failed. He purchased Winchester rifles, pistols, and shotguns, with adequate ammunition, and had them shipped under the label of sawmill equipment to Gates station near Morehead. Quietly he then gathered his forces and on June 22, 1887, engaged the Tollivers in open battle in Morehead. At the end of two hours of fighting, Craig Tolliver lay dead, and most of his associates were either killed or wounded. Logan thereupon took control of the town and held it until state troops arrived. The battle was the last bloody clash between the opposing factions in Rowan County. Several of Logan's associates were indicted for murder, but all were acquitted by a Fleming County jury. Logan himself was never tried.
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In 1888 an investigating committee of the Kentucky General Assembly visited Morehead. Its report, which traced the origins and development of the feud, declared that between August 1884 and June 22, 1887, twenty murders and assassinations had taken place and sixteen other persons had been wounded in the county. Yet, “during this period there was not a single conviction for murder, manslaughter or wounding, except for the killing of one Hughes, who was not identified with either faction.” Moreover, the committee found scores of persons charged with selling liquors without license, carrying concealed deadly weapons, disturbing religious worship, and other breaches of the peace, who had never been arrested or who had posted worthless bonds.

The investigators declared that “county officials were not only wholly inefficient, but most of them [were] in the warmest sympathy with crime and criminals,” even going so far “as to rescue criminals from the custody of the law, being totally oblivious to their duty to the commonwealth.” They singled out Circuit Court Judge A. E. Cole for censure, for his leanings toward the Tolliver side in the feud, but they admitted that “any Judge in the Commonwealth could not have enforced the law in that county.” A proposal for the abolition of Rowan County and attaching parts of it to adjacent counties, however, failed to muster the necessary legislative support.
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The legislative investigation confirmed assessments of other observers. Referring to the “epidemic of murder” that had engulfed the county, Attorney General Parker Watkins Hardin in 1885 placed much of the blame upon the grand jury, which was “organized, I know, to shield the strong and guilty and to punish the weak and defenseless” and was itself made up of “criminals, their close kin and steadfast friends and admirers.” Reflecting upon the charge by the attorney general, the
Louisville Courier-Journal
observed that it really constituted an admission that “lawlessness has pushed justice aside and taken possession of the machinery of law to protect crime.”
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In drawing attention to the problems of Judge Cole, the legislative committee investigating affairs in Rowan County touched a critical factor in the maintenance of law and order. Judge William L. Jackson of the Louisville circuit, who agreed to hold court in Breathitt County, demonstrated the importance of a fearless, impartial jurist. Jackson, a member of a prominent West Virginia family noted for its audacity, opened court with a large part of the people of the county on hand, many of them out of curiosity. When witnesses were called in the first case, which involved a murder, all answered except one. Jackson looked the sheriff squarely in the eye and commanded him to produce the missing witness. The sheriff, accustomed to more lax procedures, explained that he could not find the witness. “That's no excuse, sir,” replied Jackson. “Have him here without fail in four hours.” He then recessed the court. With that, Jackson left the bench “with dignified ease, calmly put on his hat, and walked from the courtroom alone, to the great astonishment of the natives, whose regular Judge would have remained until perfectly satisfied that no enemy was near.”

When the court reconvened at two o'clock, the appointed hour, Jackson asked the sheriff if he had the missing witness. The sheriff stated that when he reached the house of the witness he found it barricaded and full of armed mountaineers, who swore that they would kill any man who attempted to enter. Jackson reprimanded the sheriff, declaring, “Mr. Sheriff, such an excuse is not to be thought of and will not be entertained. I want the witness here at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning if you have to bring him in on a litter. Mark you, sir, a failure to comply on your part will compel the court to fine and imprison you to the full extent of the law. Do your duty, sir.”

At ten o'clock the following morning, when the court reconvened, the sheriff produced the witness, carried by half a dozen stalwart men. According to the Louisville correspondent of the
New York Times,
“One arm hung limp at his side, a leg refused to do its duty, blood trickled from all over his head, and an immense bandage concealed one eye.” Jackson bade the man to stand up and demanded why he had failed to appear. The witness explained that he had been hiding from federal marshals who planned to take him to Louisville to answer a moonshining charge. Jackson demanded that the marshals be brought before the court and declared to the eight of them who appeared that he would jail them if they attempted any further interference with the court. From then on cases were heard in an orderly manner, with more convictions than in the previous history of the county. Unlike some judges in the “bloody belt” of Kentucky, who refused to hold court without the support of state troops, Jackson acted on the premise that “this court is equal to a hundred men itself.”
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The Hatfield-McCoy feud, unlike those of Rowan and Breathitt counties, was devoid of any contest for political power. Yet it, no less than the other vendettas of eastern Kentucky, had political overtones in that the Hatfields and the McCoys, in their respective counties, represented a substantial body of voters with which any candidate for office or elected official had to reckon. Although Pike County escaped the bloody political battles that wrecked orderly government in several other counties, it, too, suffered the same weaknesses in the preservation of law and order and the administration of justice. This ineffectiveness provided fertile soil in which the Hatfield-McCoy feud could grow. Had there been an infusion of the spirit of Judge Jackson into the judicial affairs of Pike County, as well as Logan County, West Virginia, the Tug Valley would almost certainly have been spared some of the bloodiest scenes in its history, which loomed on the horizon.