Days of Darkness (2 page)

And protection was often needed. For example, Governor Simon B. Buckner on September 8, 1889, received from A.J. Robards, a doctor in Breathitt County, the following, which gives an idea of the state of affairs in the hills:

Sir, this morning i take a plesher of writin to you to in form you of the conduc of our men in Breathitt, perry and Knot and Lecher. Sir, good men can't pass up and down our county rodes with out beain shot at from the bresh and it is from the French and Eversole and Johns facts and it is not on a count of political a fares. When one gits soe he can hire a man to kill his neighbor he is redy to doe it see how Rose was murdered and Buck Combs Cornet and others and the partys are running at large with their guns shooting cursen and drinkin and good sciticins are a feared to pass there for we pray to you that some step may be tacen to put this down and there ant noe use of ordern our officers in this part to stop it as they only push it on.

As i was on my way home from seeing a sick man onley yesterdy a man from the bresh shot at me and come near killen me and I will haft to leave home on less som step is taken and i did not noe of a man in the world that had out a ginst me thoe i think it was done threw a mistake for some one elce. So please excuse me for my long leter i am yours fraternally Dr. A.J. Robards, MD of Medicin.

Whatever the causes of the feuds, they are elusive. Still, anyone who writes of the feuds is expected to reveal some thread that runs through them, some circumstance, some trait of character that is common to feuds or feudists. I doubt that I can. Historians tend to tie the feuds to the Civil War, and there is a certain validity in their thesis. Men coming home from the war, having fought against each other, suffered defeat and loss, or survived painful battle, undoubtedly nursed grudges. Further, those few who had not known before the war how to use guns had learned, and many had brought their guns home with them, creating an explosive opportunity.

But take the feuds one by one: In Pike County, nearly all of the Hatfields and McCoys had been Confederates. In Harlan, most of the Howards had been Unionists; the Turners, or most of them, had been
Confederates, but several Turner allies had been for the Union. In Clay County, as in Breathitt, nearly everyone had fought for the Union. In the French-Eversole and Martin-Tolliver fights, Civil War status seems to have had little or no influence, as both Rebels and Yankees fought on both sides.

The feuds have been blamed also on geographic and cultural isolation, remoteness from urban centers, and the degree of difficulty of transportation and communication. These were not, I would guess, major factors in the Rowan County affair, since Morehead enjoyed relatively convenient rail and road access to Lexington, Louisville, and Cincinnati. Remoteness had a far greater effect, I would judge, on Harlan, Pike, and Perry Counties, and a somewhat lesser effect on Breathitt and Clay.

The Kentucky feudist has for too long, I feel, been depicted as ignorant and totally lacking in culture, a brush too broad for all the cases. At one end of the spectrum, the Hatfields and McCoys were uneducated; at the other, Fulton French and Joe Eversole were attorneys. The Whites and Garrards of Clay County were college graduates. Jim Howard was quite literate. Many of the Bakers—such as Gardner and Thena—had relatively little formal education but were well read. Most of the major figures in the Breathitt County War were educated—lawyers or businessmen. Boone Logan of the Rowan County War was a fine lawyer and later a remarkably successful businessman. The Turners and Howards of Harlan County had the schooling common to the day, the equivalent of high school. Bad Tom Baker was uneducated but believed deeply in formal education and worked hard for it in Clay County.

There is no common denominator here, and no common thread.

Were these feuds clashes of different social and cultural classes? Seldom. Not often was a feeling of social superiority or the resentment felt by inferiors the spark that ignited a war. The Hatfields and McCoys were both common mountain yeomen, though the McCoys, as historian Altina Waller says, may have envied the greater land-holdings and potential wealth of the Hatfields. The Turners of Harlan County seem to have felt superior to the Howards, though both families were of comparable background, and the Howards no doubt resented the Turners' attitude. This may have been a factor. In Clay County, the Whites and Garrards were equally wealthy and prominent, well known and respected statewide. Their differences were not social. Neither were the differences between the Howards and Bakers, though Jim Howard apparently felt more urbane, polished, and educated than the Bakers, who were a rough lot. Fulton French
felt an economic superiority to the Eversoles, and Joe Eversole felt a definite moral superiority to French. But in general it would be inadvisable to place much blame on social or cultural differences between the warring factions.

Now we get down to more tangible factors—money and politics. Except in the fight between the Bakers and Howards in Clay County, and perhaps the Hatfields and McCoys in Pike, financial rivalry was nearly always a factor. Competition over salt sparked the rivalry between the Whites and the Garrards. Craig Tolliver wanted to control the whiskey and hotel business in Morehead and saw the Logans as threats. Wilson Lewis of Harlan is thought to have wanted to control the whiskey business and saw the Howards as obstacles. George Turner wanted to control the mercantile business, and he too ran into competition from the large Howard family. The French-Eversole war was, as Allen Watts says, “a business fight.” French was squeezing the small landowner on behalf of the big land companies; Joe Ever-sole was trying to stop him, with the help of Josiah Combs. Jim Hargis, along with Ed Callahan, wanted not only to run but to own Breathitt County.

Aside from Perry Cline's political ambitions, political, partisan competition had little role in the Hatfield-McCoy fight. The families lived in different states. Politics was a major factor in Rowan, Harlan, Clay, and Breathitt Counties, a minor factor in Perry.

So, once again, it is risky to impute to any one of these factors total or major blame for the feuds. None of them constitutes a thread that runs throughout the feud fabric.

Is it feasible, then, to assess blame? Altina Waller blames the feuds on tensions arising between people who were trying to adjust to the changes that accompanied industrialization and the coming of railroads and mining to the mountains. This may have been true of the Hatfield-McCoy trouble, which she examines in unmatched detail. But the same conditions do not apply in other cases. What specifically caused the Hatfield-McCoy fight? Well, whiskey, for one thing. Circumstances. Times that were bringing changes only faintly understood.

Changing times were a major source of the trouble that led to the French-Eversole war—the coming of big land companies that led to exploitation of coal and timber and the resulting threat to the mountain way of life. Then, too, there were differences in moral standards, differences in principles.

The Turner-Howard feud was fueled by Civil War hangovers and resentments, by Turner arrogance, Howard pride, Lewis chicanery.
This feud, I believe, may have sprung from conflicts of personality and character more than any of the others save that of Perry County. Mrs. George Turner was symbolic when she declared that Harlan would be ruled by Turners or Howards, but not both.

One gets the feeling that the Baker-Howard feud in Clay County could have been avoided many times had it not been for peculiar times and circumstances. Then there were the financial rivalries, the hangings of Abner and later William Baker, both of which contained the poisonous seeds of injustice. Abner was crazy and should not have been hanged. William was innocent, apparently protecting his wife. The involvement of Garrards and Whites on opposing sides of these cases cast a dangerous pall over the county. Add to this the violence of the times, the bitterness of politics in Clay, and the abuse of politics to handicap and deny justice to the losing opponent. Whiskey was an exacerbating factor.

The Martin-Tolliver mess in Rowan County was simply a political and financial fight complicated by whiskey. In Breathitt County politics, money, brutal arrogance on Hargis's part, and the emotional holdover from the Strong-Little Wars contributed to disaster. And again, whiskey played a terrible role.

A common thread? Whiskey, perhaps. Pride in some cases, politics in most.

Did heroes and villains emerge from the feuds? The answer depends, of course, on one's definition. If there were heroes in the Hatfield-McCoy feud, they were probably the McCoy boys—Bud and Jim, who kept their senses in times of violence and prevented worse violence, and Calvin, who sacrificed his life to save his sisters and parents. It is hard to find anything admirable about the Hatfields, although Wall deserved better than he got. Devil Anse, Jim Vance, Johnse, and most of the other Hatfields were little more than thugs. I cannot find grounds for admiring Devil Anse, who not only engineered the two instances of brutal murder but lacked the backbone to commit them himself and sent his underlings out to do the slaughtering.

Craig Tolliver was an interesting villain, and I wish I could have learned more about him. Boone Logan has been accorded the hero's laurel in the Rowan County fight, but he was not one without flaws; he chose killing when he might have forced a surrender of the Tollivers. He didn't stick around to help clean up the blood, and he let his co-warriors face the trials. I think Fred Brown was near to correct when he said, “There were no heroes here, no villains, just people.” But you have to admit that there were some pretty bad people.

In the Turner-Howard feud, there were villains enough to go around, especially among the Turners, including Wilson Lewis and Mrs. Turner, she a bundle of hate. Wilse Howard was a violent man, but he had reasons to be. So did Will Jennings. Fult French was a villain. Joe Eversole and his wife Susan were heroes. That's about it.

The Clay County War? Take your pick. I suppose you have to list George and Jesse Barrett, Frank McDaniel, and James and Bad Tom Baker among the bad ones, although Bad Tom had mitigating characteristics. Lucy and George Goforth, Gardner and Thena Baker, and, above all, T.T. Garrard had streaks of nobility. Big Jim Howard will always remain an enigma. So will Chad Hall, if he indeed did the things he said he did.

In Breathitt County, Jim Hargis, Ed Callahan, Curtis Jett, Tim Smith, John Aikman, Hen Kilburn, Bill Strong, and Jerry Little were killers or hired the killers. Beach Hargis was a nut. J.B. Marcum, the Cockrells, and Dr. D.B. Cox were victims. It's hard to find heroes.

Now, is there a characteristic, a trait of personality common to these people? Greed? A lust for money or power? A willingness to avoid or violate the law for advantage? A willingness to sacrifice for family or friends? Loyalty? A sense of fair play? Pride? Faith? About the only common trait I can see is a certain loyalty to family and friends, often a sense of pride.

All of this leaves only one constant—the times—and that is uncertain as a causative factor. Time and circumstance, as the preacher said, affect them all: postwar violence, the growth of Democratic Party dominance, the slow growth of formal religion in an area where people had tended to equate organized religion with the power and oppression of the state, the hurtful effect of poverty on formal education, and the generally debilitating effect of the advent of industrial colonialism in the heavy hands of mining and timber companies. Then there was the growing resistance to whiskey as an acceptable social custom. And the melting away of the frontier—its remoteness, its attitudes, its customs, its opportunity for personal privacy and independence, the need for self-dependence.

We must keep in mind that most of the feuds were of brief duration. The outside world pressed in, conditions changed, and so did the people. The feuds reflect the Kentucky mountaineer only in the sense that rapid growth and a tendency toward brash manners reflect the adolescent. But as with the man who makes a fool of himself in youth, the mountain feudist's violent reputation has tended to linger.

HARLAN COUNTY

The Turners Meet the Howards

Choose Your Outlaw

Devil Jim Turner didn't get his nickname by accident. Once, while hiding from the law, he got hungry, slipped up on a herd of dairy cows, knocked one unconscious, cut a hunk of meat off the cow's hindquarter, ate it perhaps raw, and ran the cow, bleeding, limping, and bellowing, back with the others. Jim terrorized members of his own family as well as neighbors. After an argument with an aunt, he knocked her down and raped her.

Jim was not the only free spirit in the clan. The Turners were often ready to resort to gunplay to get their way. Along with the Howards, Cawoods, Brittains, and Halls, the Turners were among the early settlers of Harlan County, coming from Lee County, Virginia, shortly after the turn of the century, before Harlan was carved out of Lincoln County. Well to do by frontier standards, they brought slaves with them, bought some of the better land on the Clover Fork of the Cumberland River, and later built a home known as the Turner Mansion in Mount Pleasant, the first name of the county seat. (There was already a Mount Pleasant in Kentucky, so the village was later renamed Harlan Courthouse when the county was formed in 1819 and finally simply Harlan.)

William Turner established a large farm on Clover Fork and opened a general store in Harlan. His son, William II, was born in 1812 and married Elizabeth Brittain. They had one son, George Brittain Turner, who grew to be six feet, three inches tall, and weighed 350 pounds. William and his second wife Susannah also had James, Sarah, and Lucy. James married Elizabeth Clay in 1833, and they had nine children; their sons William and James (Devil Jim) seem to have had a vicious streak and caused trouble. Some people considered the Turners community leaders who helped less fortunate families get a start. C.A. Ballou, author of
A Cumberland Vendetta,
called them “demons of greed and ambition.”