Hatfield‐McCoy Feud

Hatfield‐McCoy Feud. The most famous feud in American history occurred in the mountains of southern West Virginia and northeastern Kentucky between 1878 and 1890. Legend attributes the feud to lingering Civil War hostilities and a dispute over the ownership of a hog, but the evidence suggests that rapid economic and cultural change shaped the conflict.

Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield (1839–1921) and Randolph “Old Ranel” McCoy (1825–1913) first became entangled in a court case over land and logging rights in 1872. However, most writers claim the feud actually began with a legal dispute over a hog in 1878. From there things became worse. On Election Day in 1882, three sons of McCoy killed a brother of Hatfield, who fought back by ritually executing the three McCoy youths. No further incidents or press coverage occurred, however, until nearly six years later. By that time, the discovery of coal had brought the Norfolk and Western Railroad through Hatfield land, increasing its value. Almost overnight, state politicians became obsessed with economic development in the mountains. In this volatile context, a relative of Randolph McCoy, a lawyer named Perry Cline, in 1887 persuaded Kentucky governor Simon Buckner to authorize a posse to cross into West Virginia and arrest the Hatfields. The Kentucky posse fought several battles with a Hatfield group calling themselves “regulators,” during which several individuals on both sides were killed. Finally, on New Year's morning 1888, a small group of Hatfield supporters (but not Devil Anse himself) crossed the Tug River and trudged up the mountain to the McCoy cabin, which they set on fire, killing two of Randolph McCoy's children. The rest of the family fled to Pikeville, Kentucky, never to return to their mountain home.

Meanwhile, West Virginia governor E. Willis Wilson, claiming that Buckner had violated extradition procedures, took the case to the Supreme Court, which upheld Kentucky's right to try the Hatfields. Of the eight Hatfields convicted, seven spent time in prison and one was hanged. Devil Anse, however, died peacefully of old age. In contrast to legends suggesting that hundreds were killed over a period of a hundred years, the death toll was actually a dozen within as many years. Press sensationalism obscured the fact that economic development and modernization, not primitive mountain culture, had exacerbated the violence.
See also Appalachia; Railroads.

Bibliography

Virgil Carington Jones , The Hatfields and the McCoys, 1948.
Otis Rice , The Hatfields and the McCoys, 1978.
Altina Waller , Feud: Hatfields, McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia 1860–1890, 1988.

Altina Waller