Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900

Almost everyone has heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys, and I am no exception - but reading this book came about in a different way for me. A friend's granddaughter was, in essence, marrying a boy of whom her parents did not approve, apparently without good reason, but feelings were running high nonetheless. She came to me with the tale of strife and stress the week before the wedding took place and afterward, I made a remark in jest - "well, did the Hatfield girl safely hitch up with the McCoy boy?" After thinking about it awhile, the very idea of it gave me the impetus to read up on the famous feud, and what it actually might have been, since I had written off the "over the theft of a hog " as possible "hogwash". But since stranger things than that have happened, I really didn't know for sure. Further, I had never before read anything remotely akin to what this particular book promised to be - an in-depth, researched history of a particular people rather than tall tales, and life within a remote Appalachian mountain region. Lo and behold, to my total amazement, the hog scenario had it's origins rooted in fact; it was the rest of it that took an unexpected twist, because the initial disputes were handled and handled correctly, it would seem, in the courts like anyone else. Perhaps some were lacking in educational advantages, but in fact, as one reads on, it seems more and more evident that neither the Hatfields nor the McCoys were more excitable or lawless than anyone else and attempted to abide by legal decisions with but a few exceptions; and certainly no more violent than we see on city streets today. My own state, in it's early days would hang a horse thief without benefit of jury if caught with the goods; and probably would have hung a hog thief just as quickly if hogs had been as important in long-distance transportation as was the horse in that day. As for disapproving parents, that hasn't changed much over time, either; nor has the "willful disobedience" of the children who intend to do their own thinking occasionally. There will always be mystery surrounding this feud, since it has become so intrenched in tradition for all of us; "The Stuff of Legend" nurtures an eternal life of it's own and I think we like it that way. It was a very interesting subject and I recommend it for those interested in alternate American History. I was delighted to find this story so well written, and as a thoroughly researched historical accounting rather than another one sided story-telling. It debunks several myths, attempts to pinpoint and give reason to cause & effect events and or/social & economic climate that may have contributed to the feud in a scholarly way; but I wonder if it wasn't due to plain old human nature and nothing more.

This book happens to be one of the only studies that Dr. Coleman Hatfield recommended at one of the talks I attended. Dr. Hatfield is the great-grandson of Devil Anse and is quite a history scholar in his own right -- and the author of "THE TALE OF THE DEVIL" the first and only biography of Devil Anse Hatfield. Waller has meticulously studied the subject matter, and it's worth reading. And American tragedy.

Dr. Waller attempts to get past the "traditional accounts", usually assembled from the newspaper and popular accounts of the time, but falls into one error which confounds the rest of her presentation: she found a great deal of information for the Hatfield family and for the West Virginia side of the river, but not as much for the Kentucky side and she generalized about the second using what she learned from the first. While the book was exceptionally well-researched, some information was overlooked or missed. Professor Waller unfortunately accepts the claim that the Tug Valley was a Confederate stronghold. However, only the West Virginia side of the river was strongly Confederate in its sympathies. The Kentucky side of the river contained a large number of Union veterans (possibly as many as a hundred or more men from this area joined the Federal army), and, in fact, in Pike County the area bordering the river was the most loyal in the entire county (post-war voting records reveal the largest percentages of Republican voters in the two precincts which were part of the Tug Valley). Waller's initial conclusions lead her to dismiss the Civil War connections of the feud. She was apparently unaware of the high degree of Unionism in the region and how it may have contributed to what could have been a continuation of the 1861-1865 warfare on the border, despite the alleged thirteen- and five-year respites. While it is well-known that Hatfield and his kin were Confederate veterans (though there is a justifiable dispute as to whether Devil Anse was actually a member of the Logan Wildcats), and it is also known that many of the McCoys had served in gray with the Hatfields, in the later phases of the feud (aptly identified by Dr. Waller) the participation of several former Union veterans or their sons in the fighting against the Hatfields indicates a significant Civil War connection. The evidence that the feuding was a carryover from the war is substantial and cannot be dismissed.

It has long been assumed that the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys in the 1880's was a family affair between two clans of primitive hillbillies. In Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900, Altina Waller argues that this view is nothing less than folklore, and the historical reality of the feud has been all but lost. Her work successfully explodes the myths that have surrounded the feuding Hatfields and McCoys.In her introduction, Professor Waller discusses the previous interpretations of the feud. The first states that, "the feud and the culture from which it emerged were anachronisms in modern society" and "they represented a primitive way of life which had somehow been preserved in much the same way that prehistoric fossils are preserved." The second school of thought suggests that the feud was a result of the transformation that was occurring in the region due to the "onslaught of industrialization." Waller rejects both of these interpretations because of three aspects of the feud that she has identified as violence, family, and timing. Waller has concluded after much research that "in the 1870s and 1880s, the Tug Valley may have been boisterous and rowdy, but it was far from dangerous" and that "something unusual was happening eithin this particular community which drove a few individuals and families to resort to extreme measures." And Waller discounts the family explanation because " supportersof the Hatfields and of the Mccoys consisted of numerous individuals unrelated to those families; in fact, more than half of each group were unrelated to the feud leaders. More puzzling, there were McCoys on the Hatfield side and Hatfields on the McCoy side." Waller rejects also that the feud was caused by the Civil War. She dates the feud from 1878-1900, and identifies two phases with a five year interim. Waller offers that the feud must be examined internally and also in the light of regional and national trends.The Tug Valley in the years following the Civil War underwent profound changes. Due to rapid growth in population and the finite agricultural resources available in the Valley, a sort of greedy desperation began to emerge in the character of some inhabitants of the Tug Valley. Also at this time outside interest in the vast resources of the Appalachias was taking the form of big money men and local agents purchasing huge tracts of land in order to exploit the mountains for their coal and timber. Gradually the mountaineer was transformed from an inependent farmer to an impoverished wage laborer. attempting to buck this trend is none other than Devil Anse Hatfield. Through hard work and some crafty legal maneuvers, Anse becomes proprieter of a sizable timber busines. And in the process incurs the wrath of Old Ranel McCoy and Perry Cline. Old Ranel through his own foolishness has not prospered, and Anse has bested Cline in a court action and removed him from his lands, which are then awarded to Anse. This

Waller has a done a spectacular job of recreating this now infamous event, seperating fact from myth and rebutting many of the stereotypes that were perpetrated about the feud by the Northern press that glamorized it. As a native of Pike County, Kentucky and a distant relative of many involved in this feud, I found the text most informative. It is also accesible to anyone who is not from Appalachia or who is not versed in its history.