Days of Darkness (7 page)

Court was due to begin on Monday, November 25. On November 24 opposing feudists began arriving in Jackson in force. On Monday morning Captain Bill Strong and his followers arrived and took up quarters in a log building down the street from the courthouse. In Strong's group were his reputed top killer, “Hen” Kilburn, Steve McIntosh, former slave “Nigger Dick” Strong, mulattoes William and Daniel Freeman, and perhaps a dozen others. The Littles were backed by the Aliens and Gambles and the famed gunman Big John Aikman.

During the noon recess of the court, Aikman and his men rode into town and hitched their horses on the public square. Bill Strong and his men were lounging just down the street, and for a while there was a tense silence. Then Daniel Freeman, one of the mulattoes with Strong, walked up to Aikman and, in a show of more courage than sense, asked him what he wanted.

With a mean smile, Aikman slowly drew his pistol.

“I don't know that I was wanting anything particular,” he said, “but I'll take a dead nigger.” Freeman turned to run, and Aikman shot him in the back. William Freeman had been a few steps behind his brother, and when he rushed forward to help him, Aikman shot him, too. This set off a general gunfight. Strong's forces withdrew to the log cabin, where they had left their rifles. Aikman, Justice of the Peace Whick Allen, and their men took over the courthouse, making it their headquarters. The streets were immediately deserted as non-combatants fled from town or to their homes.

Throughout the afternoon the two sides kept up a desultory and ineffective fire. Eventually Daniel Freeman, who had been left lying in the street, was rescued and taken to the Haddix home a few miles south of Jackson. A doctor was called, but the bullet had entered Freeman's back and come out on his right side, and he died. William Freeman, though wounded in the thigh and back, recovered.

When it grew dark, Aikman and the Little forces left the courthouse and gathered at the home of Alfred Little on the Kentucky River. They were there when Deputy Charles Little and his posse returned from Lexington bearing the bad news that they had not been able to rescue Jason and that Hagins would be returning with him at any time.

Dawn broke on a tense town. Aikman's force contained a number of Jason Little's relatives and friends. Bill Strong's band contained as many who wanted Jason hanged. There were rumors that some of Aikman's men had ridden out to lay an ambush for Hagins and rescue his prisoner. Circuit Judge Randall ordered Deputy Sheriff James Back to gather a posse of fifteen men and go out to reinforce the approaching sheriff. Judge Burnett, despite the warnings of friends, took over leadership of this posse. They rode out of town and met Hagins's force about five miles from Jackson.

Aikman, seeing the odds shift with the reinforcement of Hagins's forces, got on his horse and headed home. After he left, Squire Allen took command of the Little forces, who numbered about fifty men, and they took up stations to greet Sheriff Hagins and his posse. The battle never took place. Hagins and his men rode quietly into town by a side road and were approaching the courthouse before the Little forces realized they had returned. Jason Little was placed in the jail, and the posse members, thinking the danger had passed, started for home.

But as Judge Burnett and Sheriff Hagins started down the street to the nearby boardinghouse, two men stood in the street shouting
insults at them. They ignored the remarks and kept walking, but suddenly someone shouted, “Watch out!” and Burnett turned and was shot, allegedly by Alfred Gamble. A man with Gamble, allegedly Alfred Little, a nephew of Jason, tried to shoot Hagins, but his pistol misfired. Burnett ran a few steps and collapsed. Hagins carried him into the home of George Sewell, where he died.

While this was going on, a group under Squire Allen rushed the jail and tried to break down the door. Tom Little, a cousin of Jason, pushed his way to the front of the mob and begged the men not to take the law into their own hands. Someone shot and killed him. The shot and the sight of him sprawled in front of the jail door cooled the mob, and they retreated.

Captain Bill Strong and his men took up positions in their log fort, Allen and the Little forces withdrew to the courthouse, and Sheriff Hagins and his guard took over the hotel across the street from the jail. Sporadic firing continued for several hours, but no one seemed to be sure who was shooting at whom, or for what particular reason. The Littles had brought into town a barrel of applejack that had reinforced the courage of the jail attackers, but as night drew on the barrel grew empty and thoughts sobered. By Wednesday morning the Little forces had disappeared. Sheriff Hagins took over the courthouse, from which he had a clear view of the jail. Captain Strong and his men left for their homes on the North Fork.

But peace did not immediately descend on Jackson. With Sheriff Hagins and his men holed up in the courthouse and Deputy Charles Little and his men riding around town, no one seemed sure who represented the law. To make matters worse, Judge Randall, disgusted—and probably frightened—suddenly rode out of town for Hazard at daybreak without giving notice. By midmorning a mob roamed the streets, drunk and dangerous, firing into the air, some of them again shouting their intentions to storm the jail and take Jason Little. Nothing came of it. Sheriff Hagins tried to establish some order, and eventually the drunks sobered up and went home. By December 7, when Lieutenant Thompson of the state militia visited Jackson, he could report to Governor James B. McCreary that everything was quiet, that “the excitement was nothing like so great as reported, and did not extend to the people generally.”

The lieutenant could be excused for being deceived by the apparent calm. He was not familiar with the county or its conflicts and had no way to detect the currents of hostility beneath the surface calm. Unfortunately, his report made the governor inclined to minimize the Breathitt conflict, and it was not until Judge Randall warned that he
would not convene a special term of court without the protection of troops that the governor took things seriously. On December 12, for the second time in five years, troops were ordered into Breathitt County. Even then Judge Randall did not feel secure in Jackson. He reentered the town quietly by night and showed up in court next morning flanked by soldiers.

With the help of troopers, Hagins and his men rounded up more than thirty men who had taken part in the violence. Twenty of them were taken to jail in Louisville and kept there until the following June, when they were brought back to Jackson under military guard and tried.

Jason Little was tried and found guilty but managed to get a sentence of life in prison and, after serving a little more than five years in the penitentiary, was pardoned and came home. Others took to the hills. Some came back and surrendered when things cooled off. Big John Aikman went over into Letcher County, where he was reported to be a hired gunman in the Wright-Jones feud. But Governor McCreary, irritated by the cavalier attitude of the Breathitt feudists toward the law, sent troops after him, found him hiding at the home of a half-brother, and brought him back for trial. He was sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary but served only a little over a year before he was pardoned. He came home to Breathitt and got mixed up in the Marcum-Hargis War, the worst of the Breathitt blood-lettings.

The Little-Burnett feud was pretty well over. How many people had been killed is hard to calculate. Counting casualties in the Strong-Noble fights and the Strong-Amis feud, as many as seventy-five may have fallen. It was later estimated that more than a hundred were killed by the turn of the century, but such figures are estimates.

And little had been accomplished. At the election of a county judge to succeed the fallen Burnett, James Lindon was elected. Since Lindon was new to Breathitt County and had no long-standing ties to any faction, everyone assumed that he was an ally of his wife's brother, James B. Marcum, who would later become a main figure in Breathitt's worst feud. Charles Little, deputy sheriff and cousin of Jason, was elected sheriff to succeed Hagins. Any progress toward reform achieved in the Burnett-Hagins years was forgotten.

Mt. Pleasant, later renamed Harlan, looks placid enough in this photo, but it was the site of the Turner-Howard feud, which kept things stirred up for years. All Wilse Howard had to do was threaten to burn it down and the whole town went into a panic.

Harlan County Courthouse around 1880. At least one good gunfight of the Turner-Howard feud took place here. Both from R. C. Ballard Thruston Collection, The Filson Club Historical Society.

a drawing of Wilson (Wilse) Howard, leader of the Howard family in its feud with the Turners, and usually considered the villain of the feud—though several others were equally qualified.

Mrs. George Turner, who might have stopped the feud but apparently had no desire to do so. Both from the
Courier-Journal
, Louisville. Berry Howard

saw his kinsmen involved in both the Turner-Howard feud in Harlan County and the bloody Clay County War, though he was active in neither. He was acquitted of the assassination of Governor William Goebel. From Caleb Powers,
My Story.