The Hatfields and the McCoys (8 page)

6

INFLAMMATORY POLITICS

P
IKE COUNTY shared both the political and judicial afflictions which prevailed in much of eastern Kentucky. The Hatfield and McCoy clans, like the feuding factions of Breathitt, Perry, Rowan, and other counties, were large and politically significant. They or their partisans frequently held positions of administrative and judicial responsibility, ranging from sheriffs to justices of the peace and constables, and dominated juries, as did the feudists in other counties. When it came to dealing with the Hatfield-McCoy feud, law-enforcement authorities in Pike County proved no more effective than those in other disturbed sections of Kentucky. Nor did the authority of the state, usually asserted with reluctance, gain in strength as it flowed from Frankfort to this easternmost of Kentucky's counties.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud posed special problems for law enforcement in Pike County, for, unlike most mountain vendettas, it transcended not only county lines but also state boundaries. The dominance of the McCoy faction in Pike County and the relative neutrality of the Kentucky branch of the Hatfield family gave the McCoys a clear advantage there. County officials who aspired to use the feud for personal advantage had no choice except to align themselves with the McCoys. The same situation, in reverse, existed in Logan County, West Virginia, where the Hatfields had a powerful influence.

The gubernatorial race in Kentucky in 1887 demonstrated the close connection between the Hatfield-McCoy feud and Pike County politics. Perry Cline, the ambitious Pikeville lawyer and politician and a brother of the widow of Harmon McCoy, promised to deliver the McCoy votes to Simon Bolivar Buckner, the Democratic candidate. In return, Buckner, who faced an uphill battle, evidently agreed that if he were elected he would use the powers of his office to bring the Hatfields to justice. Cline, a staunch partisan of the McCoys, ignored an earlier appeal of Devil Anse Hatfield for detente. Pressed by Randolph McCoy, who declared that someone, presumably a Hatfield supporter, had recently fired at him from ambush, Cline did much to keep the fires of hostility alive.

The prospects of the use of authority of the state of Kentucky struck the Hatfields not as an intervention in the interest of justice but as the employment of the judicial and military power of the Commonwealth for the benefit of the McCoys. The Hatfields had no intention of submitting their fate to any Kentucky court or of yielding to any extradition procedures. Anticipating efforts to capture them, they organized a vigilante force which they called the Logan County Regulators.

Following the election of Buckner as governor, the Logan County Regulators met at Logan and addressed a letter to Perry Cline, whom they regarded as the principal political agitator against them. Dated August 29, 1887, the letter asserted, “My name is Nat Hatfield. I am not a single individual by a good many, and we do not live on Tug River, but we live all over this county. We have been told by men from your county that you and your men are fixing to invade this county for the purpose of taking the Hatfield boys, and now, sir, we, forty-nine in number at present, do notify you that if you come into this county to take or bother any of the Hatfields, we will follow you to hell or take your hide, and if any of the Hatfields are killed or bothered in any way, we will charge it up to you, and your hide will pay the penalty.”

The letter continued, “We are not bothering you and neither are the Hatfields, and as long as you keep your hands off Logan County men, we will not do anything, but if you don't keep your hands off our men, there is not one of you will be left in six months. There is present at this time forty-nine of the men who regulated matters at this place a short time ago and we can get as many as we need in six hours. We have a habit of making one-horse lawyers keep their boots on and we have plenty of good strong rope left, … and our hangman tied a knot for you and laid it quietly away until we see what you do. We have no particular pleasure in hanging dogs, but we know you and have counted the miles and marked the tree.”
¹

Meanwhile, Jacob and Larkin McCoy, brothers of Nancy, Mary, and Jeff, crossed the Tug Fork with the intention of capturing Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace and taking them to the Pikeville jail. They never apprehended Cap, but they succeeded in taking Wallace. Caught by surprise, Wallace went along peacefully, but he challenged the right of the McCoys to arrest him without either warrant or extradition papers. Within a week after his confinement, however, Wallace escaped from the Pike County jail under circumstances that suggest some kind of collusion between him and the jailer, whom he had once befriended.

Furious that their prisoner had escaped, Jake and Lark McCoy vowed that they would never return Wallace to the jail at Pikeville. In the spring of 1887 Wallace was found dead in West Virginia. To the suggestion that they killed him, the McCoy brothers only laughed and replied that they had only taken Wallace to jail. Another account of the death of Wallace holds that two bounty hunters, both strangers, approached Jake and Lark and announced that they had come to collect a reward which the McCoys had offered for Wallace. One of the strangers explained that they could not bring Wallace's body from West Virginia but that they had tangible evidence of his death. He then drew from his coat a scalp with a white streak down the center, one of Wallace's most prominent features. Convinced that the scalp was indeed that of Wallace, the McCoys promised the strangers the reward money.
²

Ignoring both the threat made against him by the Logan County Regulators and the precipitous action of Jake and Lark McCoy, Perry Cline proceeded with his own plans. From the clerk of the Pike County Criminal Court he obtained copies of the indictments against the Hatfields, which in 1884 had been transferred from the Pike County Circuit Court. Cline hoped to use the indictments to induce Governor Buckner to offer a reward for the arrest of the Hatfields and to make a requisition upon the governor of West Virginia for their delivery to Kentucky. On September 6, 1887, accompanied by Lee Ferguson, the Pike County attorney, and Frank Phillips, a deputy sheriff, Cline left for Frankfort.
³

On September 10 Governor Buckner, pressed by the Pike County delegation, fulfilled his campaign promise to Cline. He made a formal requisition upon Governor Emanuel Willis Wilson of West Virginia for the return to Kentucky of Devil Anse Hatfield and nineteen others charged with the murder of the three sons of Randolph McCoy on the evening of August 9, 1882. In addition, he announced that in accordance with a recommendation of Tobias Wagner, the Pike County judge, the state of Kentucky would offer a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of Devil Anse and his delivery to the jailer of Pike County. Upon the advice of Cline, Buckner named Pike County Deputy Sheriff Frank Phillips to receive the prisoners, provided, of course, the governor of West Virginia chose to honor the request for extradition.
⁴

In designating Frank Phillips as his agent, Buckner further enmeshed the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the politics of Pike County and detracted from any possibility of an impartial and disinterested application of the law. Phillips was a man of unquestionable courage, and both Buckner and Cline could trust him to carry out their instructions. Unfortunately, he had a tendency to act impetuously and cruelly, particularly when under the influence of liquor. Kentucky Adjutant General Sam E. Hill described him as “a handsome little fellow, with piercing black eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a pleasant expression, but a mighty unpleasant man to project with.” Like Johnse Hatfield, he had a reputation for his amorous pursuits, a trait that lowered him in the esteem of more sedate members of the McCoy family.
⁵

On September 30, 1887, three weeks after he made his requisition upon Governor Wilson, Buckner received a reply. Wilson stated that he could not comply with Buckner's requisition since the Kentucky governor had not included an affidavit from the Pike County authorities, as required by West Virginia law. Buckner removed that technical obstacle by sending the required affidavit on October 13. Three more weeks passed, however, without any further word from West Virginia.
⁶

Governor Wilson was under considerable pressure to resist any compliance with Buckner's requisition. The Hatfields employed legal counsel, flooded the governor's office with petitions, affidavits, and material designed to convince him of the Tightness of their cause and the injustice that they would endure if he delivered them to Frank Phillips. They drew attention to the influence of the McCoys with Pike County officials and contended that they could never receive a fair trial in that county. Moreover, they reminded Wilson that the McCoys had committed various felonies in West Virginia for which they had never been punished.
⁷

Suspicious that Wilson's delay in replying to Buckner's second letter was deliberate, Perry Cline on November 5 abandoned all protocol and addressed a letter of his own to the West Virginia governor. He stated that, in accordance with Wilson's request, he had made an “affadavid” and returned it with the “requision” for the West Virginians indicted for the McCoy murders. Since he had heard nothing from Wilson, he asked for information on the status of the matter. Referring to the petitions which the Hatfields had circulated in their own behalf, Cline told Wilson, “They have and can make the people sign any kind of petition they want. I was rased [
sic
] near them [
sic
] men and know them; they are the worst band of meroders [
sic
] ever existed in the mountains, and have been in arms since the war; they will not live as citizens ought to; they stand indicted in the county in 4 bad cases of murder, and one of them which occurred about a year ago, and—last year's court was indicted for Ku-Kluxing and various other misdemeanor cases; in fact, we cannot hold our elections without them crossing the line and rung [
sic
] our citizens from the election grounds, and selling them liquors in violation of the law, and these men has [
sic
] made good citizens leave their homes and forsake all they had, and refuse to let any person to even tend their lands.”

Cline denied reports, allegedly circulated by the Hatfields, that the Pike County officials wanted them in order to kill them. He declared, “We want peace and want the laws executed, & do not want our citizens butchered up like dogs, as these men is [
sic
] doing.” Professing an interest only in seeing the laws obeyed, he continued, “We believe every person ought to answer for his conduct; that is the reason we ask the requision [sic].” In an effort to establish his own credibility, Cline told Wilson, “You can find out all about myself by writing any of our [Pike County] officers or to any of our state officers, and learn whether or not I am a man of my word.”
⁸

Without responding to the pleas of the Hatfields, Governor Wilson directed the secretary of state of West Virginia, Henry S. Walker, to inform Cline that he would honor the requisition of Buckner for all the men named in the indictments except Elias Hatfield and Andrew Varney. Walker, who wrote his letter on November 21, explained that the two men had proved to the satisfaction of the governor that they were miles away from the scene of the murder of the three McCoy brothers. Walker informed Cline that he would issue warrants for the others named in the indictments as soon as he received the fees, amounting in all to fifty-four dollars, which the law required.
⁹

Tired of waiting, Cline obtained bench warrants from the Pike County Court for the arrest of the twenty men named in the indictments. On December 12, less than a week later, Pike County Sheriff Basil Hatfield had his first arrest. Ironically, the seized man was Selkirk McCoy, for whom the McCoys had carried a special grudge since his testimony against the claims of Randolph McCoy in the hog trial in 1872. Frank Phillips, Hatfields deputy, gathered a posse and crossed the Tug Fork to West Virginia, where they took Selkirk by surprise. When Selkirk was safely locked in the Pike County jail, the McCoys must have felt that a traitor at last had received his just deserts.
¹⁰

The day after the arrest of Selkirk McCoy, Phillips wrote to Governor Wilson on the official stationery of Attorney Perry Cline. In his capacity as agent of Governor Buckner, Phillips stated that Kentucky did not care about extradition of Elias Hatfield and Andrew Varney. He enclosed fifteen dollars, however, for warrants for Devil Anse, Johnse, and Cap Hatfield, Daniel Whitt, and Albert McCoy, the son of Selkirk. Some of those named in the indictments had since died, and the Kentucky authorities reasoned that if they wanted any of the others yet living they could send for warrants later.

Another obstacle blocked Phillips's path. On December 17 Wilson, with characteristic hot temper, responded to Phillips's letter of December 13 by stating that information had reached him that “certain parties have received a large sum of money from parties named in the requisition.” The governor coupled his rather oblique statement with a curt reminder that “the money for fees should be sent to the secretary of state—not to me. I herewith return the fifteen dollars, and shall make enquiry into the matter.” He declared, rather ominously, that “requisitions and warrants thereon are issued to subserve the ends of justice and for no other purpose.”
¹¹

Wilson had good reason for misgivings about the extradition of the Hatfields and others to Kentucky. An ugly rumor had reached him that Perry Cline had induced Governor Buckner to advertise large rewards for the capture of the West Virginians and had then extorted money from the Hatfields in return for a promise that he would use his influence with the Kentucky governor to bring about a compromise. Wilson, whose honesty and integrity matched the quickness of his temper, had no intention of contributing to such double-dealing.