Days of Darkness (10 page)

the Clay County Courthouse in Manchester, with the tents of the state militia on its lawn in 1899. The troops were there to guard Tom Baker, who was being tried for the murder of Wilson Howard and Burch Stores. Courtesy of Stanley DeZarn.

Tom Baker, photographed on the afternoon of June 10,1899, moments before he was shot and killed by a sniper. Much of the fury of the Baker-Howard feud died with him. Photo from the
Courier-Journal
, Louisville.

James Ballenger “Big Jim” Howard, a tall, quiet Clay County tax assessor and leader of the Howard clan in its feud with the Bakers. His life was blighted and his reputation stained by two murders, one of which he probably did not commit. From Caleb Powers,
My Story.

Henry E. Youtsey, an emotional and eccentric state employee who was tried and imprisoned, along with Jim Howard and Caleb Powers, for conspiracy to assassinate Governor William Goebel. Governor Augustus Willson, who later pardoned Powers and Howard, said he considered Youtsey the guilty party. From Caleb Powers,
My Story.

The remains of the home of Ballard Howard on Crane Creek, built around 1845, where his sons, including Jim, were born. Originally log, it is now covered with boards. After Bal was shot from ambush by the Bakers, he was brought back home to recuperate. Courtesy of Stanley DeZarn.

The Reverend John Jay Dickey, a lovable, selfless Methodist minister who founded the first newspaper in Breathitt County and the first school, now Lees College. He went from Breathitt to Clay County, hoping—and failing—to bring peace through religion. Courtesy of Richard Weiss, Archivist, Kentucky Wesleyan College.

Delia and Esther Davidson, students at Clay County's Oneida Institute, whose father and brother were killed in the Clay War. Courtesy of the Matlack Collection, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville.

Captain Strong's Last Ride

Big John Aikman was home from the penitentiary in little more than a year, having been given the pardon that seemed routine at the time. Obtaining pardons for men in prison was one of the strongest weapons of state legislators and officials; relatives did not forget at election time the official who had gotten their husband or brother pardoned, and governors were inclined to go along, especially with members of their own parties. As a result, a life sentence was often little more than an extended vacation away from home.

Captain Bill Strong was still in command of his forces on the North Fork. But as Breathitt County entered the 1880s, peace of a sort reigned, partly because new clan leaders were emerging and a realignment of forces was taking place. The roots of the feud between the Callahan and Deaton families, usually called the Callahan-Strong feud, grew out of the old Civil War rivalry between Captain Bill Strong and Wilson Callahan. Captain Bill, according to legend, had condemned Wilson Callahan to death at one of his courts-martial. Ed Callahan, leader of the Callahan forces, was Wilson's grandson. The aging Captain Strong, who as he grew older was known almost affectionately as “Uncle Bill,” was allied with James Deaton in opposition to the Callahans. It would prove to be Captain Bill's last ride.

Ed Callahan was a tall, heavy-featured man, a shrewd businessman and a ruthless competitor. He had inherited considerable land on the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River containing rich stands of timber and good farmland. Though his family had fought for the Union during the Civil War, Callahan became influential in the Democratic Party in Breathitt. More important, perhaps, he had managed to become the captain or leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and under his leadership the Klan grew to more than a thousand members. Some historians insist that these mountain groups were not klaverns of the real Ku Klux Klan, which had prescribed uniforms or robes, rules, and hierarchy, but can more accurately be termed Regulators, ad hoc informal armies, like the one in Rowan County, that usually operated under a loose leadership in the absence of accepted legal order. But
by whatever designation, it exerted a strong influence throughout the county. It also helped Ed Callahan accumulate, for his time, considerable wealth. As he approached thirty, he was a man to be reckoned with. Young men volunteered eagerly to serve him. On election days, or when the Democrats were holding a convention, he would often ride into Jackson leading a force of four or five hundred men.

On the other side of the ledger was James Deaton, Callahan's rival in business and politics. He also had the support of a small army, most of them enemies of the Callahans and/or former followers of Captain Strong, and on convention days Deaton, like Callahan, rode at the head of several hundred men. Deaton was arrogant and boastful and several times made fun of the younger Callahan when they met at political functions.

Like the Callahans, the Deatons were a large and powerful family, but not all the Deatons were allied with James Deaton against Ed Callahan, partly because they regarded Captain Strong, Deaton's chief ally, as their primary enemy and didn't want anything to do with anyone, even a Deaton, who was in league with him. James Deaton was not very fond of Strong, either, and while he accepted his support, he didn't invite it and did not often consult with Strong.

Callahan and Deaton were always on the verge of conflict, partly because they owned adjoining land from which they both cut valuable timber which they rafted or floated from the same sandbar on the Kentucky. Usually a logger would fell his trees, cut them into uniform lengths, and burn or notch his brand into the butt end of each; he would then tie his logs, usually a hundred, into a raft. The raft would be put together on a bar or a flat place along the riverbank where it would be floated when the river rose with spring floods and carried downstream to the sawmill. Sometimes one logger would buy logs from another; he would then “dehorn” or cut off the brand of the original logger, put on his own brand, and incorporate the log into his raft. This could lead to friction because log theives were common along the river. They would snag logs, dehorn them, put on their own brand, and sell them as their own. Both Ed Callahan and James Deaton had accused the other of dehorning logs, and both were rumored to have gone out on moonless nights and cut the lines holding the other's rafts. Both stationed guards at their rafting sites, and their clashes were the basis for a stream of lawsuits.

The Callahan-Deaton rivalry burst into open battle one day when Ed Callahan happened to go by the sandbar where both his men and a Deaton crew were rafting logs. Spotting a peavy or canthook, a tool used for turning logs, Callahan walked over, picked it up, and announced that it was his, in effect accusing the Deaton crew of stealing
it. Deaton, standing nearby, flew into a rage and, according to the Callahan forces, reached for his rifle. As soon as he touched it, a dozen shots rang out and Deaton fell, dead on the spot.

In court, the Deaton men swore that Callahan had fired the first shot. The Callahan men swore the opposite and said that they had fired only to save Callahan's life. Strangely enough, Bob Deaton, a cousin of the dead man but a Callahan employee, admitted that he had fired the fatal shot. The jury was fed a mass of totally conflicting testimony.

Captain Strong had employed his nephew James B. Marcum, one of the best known and most highly respected attorneys in Kentucky, to prosecute the Callahans, and in the following years this fact turned out to be more important than the outcome of the trial, marking as it did the beginning of the hostility between Marcum and the Callahans.

As the trial progressed, it began to appear that Marcum was getting the better of the argument and that Callahan would not get off scot free. But one night while the trial was in session, a friendly guard let Callahan out of jail, and he proceeded to the boardinghouse where the jury members were housed. The husband of the woman who ran the boardinghouse was a member of the jury, and Callahan persuaded her (reportedly with a hundred dollars) to let him speak directly to the jury members. The majority of the jury were Ku Kluxers and for acquittal at any rate, but Callahan took no chances. Within an hour he was back in jail and sleeping soundly. The verdict of not guilty is said to have cost him less than $500.

But then someone, probably Captain Strong, overreached. It was rumored that Hen Kilburn, Strong's chief gunman, had been waiting for months for a chance to kill William Tharp, a prominent farmer said to have been condemned to death by Strong's court. Hen's chance came when he heard that Tharp was riding into Jackson alone. He stationed himself and his rifle, “The Death of Many,” in bushes above the trail and killed Tharp. He soon discovered his error. Tharp was not only a respected citizen but an honored member of the Klan, and within hours Kilburn was arrested and thrown into jail. The same day Ed Callahan sent out word for every member of the Klan and every Callahan follower to report at ten o'clock that night “around the courthouse.”