from ambush.

There were few courts, and the justices presiding over them knew but little law. If the law proved too slow, or courts were too far away, the settlers tried criminals and inflicted the punishment. The backwoodsman was prompt to avenge a wrong. He was grim, stern, strong, easily swayed by stormy passions, and always a lover of freedom, to the core. He had suffered horrible injuries from the Indians and learned to retaliate in kind. He became cruel and relentless toward an enemy, but was loyal to the death to his friends and country. He was upright and honest. These pioneers were indeed cast in the heroic mold. Many of them fell in the struggle; but there was no time for sentiment and wailing. Over the prostrate bodies of the fallen civilization marched triumphantly westward and gave to America one of the most attractive regions, to the nation heroic soldiers, brilliant lawyers, men of science and of art, and a womanhood whose beauty and accomplishments are a byword everywhere.

With the close of Indian hostilities came rapid development of the more easily accessible portions of the state. Intercourse with the East and North obliterated old habits and customs and primitive notions. The fertility of the soil created wealth and with it came comfort. With increasing prosperity came that high intellectual development so essential to a sound, moral public sentiment, respect for the law, and love of peace and order, the foundation stones of a happy social structure. Schools and churches demonstrated their all-powerful influence by the refinement and social purity of the inhabitants. The code duello which had formerly been resorted to almost universally in settling personal differences, was made a crime by law and completely disappeared.

In the mountains, however, development was slow. That section remained isolated and practically cut off from intercourse with the more populous and advanced portions of Kentucky and surrounding States. Only in recent years have railroads begun to spread their iron network through the mountains, tapping the almost inexhaustible coal veins, mineral deposits of various kinds, wonderful forests of timber, until now that section is become the richest in the State.

Education and refinement distinguished the Blue Grass Kentuckian at an early date; he had long enjoyed the advantages of modern civilization, while his mountaineer brother yet lived in the primitive fashion of his forebears, and still remained a backwoodsman. He suffered the same privations and possessed the traits of character of the early pioneers of the Blue Grass.

For long years the mountain section remained a wilderness, with here and there a small settlement. The inhabitants lived the lives of frontiersmen and were generally poor. While many of them owned large tracts of land, its productiveness scarcely repaid the labor spent in cultivation. The great majority of these people were honest, upright and hardworking, but the wilderness, the frontier, unfortunately attracts the vicious, the violent, the criminal, the shiftless, the outcast of better communities. Such characters have a pernicious influence upon those with whom they come in contact, especially upon the young and thoughtless fellows with a taste for viciousness.[2] The mountains of the surrounding states of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee offered admirable asylum to fugitives from justice of those States. As like seeks like, individuals and families of that stripe settled near each other, intermarried, and thus formed a dangerous element in an otherwise good population.

Life in the wilderness, the frontier, is apt to bring out the true nature of the man, and his qualities, good or bad, are accentuated. The history of every frontier of this country is the same. The man who leaves the restraining influence of civilization behind him, becomes either man or devil. If there is “dog-hair” in a man, the wilderness, the frontier, will sprout it.

When the wicked element in a community had once gained a foothold, it organized against possible interference. Once organization was complete, all attempts to enforce law and order were promptly stifled through terrorization which intimidated courts and overawed the officers of the law. Under such circumstances the good element has but one alternative—to lie supinely on its back and ask to be killed, or to organize and strike back at the enemy, to destroy the vicious with powder and shot, in open fight, if possible, from ambush if necessary, as their sires fought in the days of the Indian. Herein lies the secret of the long-continued, bloody internecine strifes which have made the dark and bloody ground of the Indian days more dark and more bloody. Herein we find the ready and clear explanation of the fact that many men of unquestioned integrity and honor were thrown into the vortex of bloody strife from necessity, to fight for preservation of themselves, their families, their firesides.

Immigration into these remote mountain regions was almost nil and intermarriage between the settlers became the rule. In this wise the population of any county comprised but very few distinct families. Everybody was of kin to everybody else, and therein we find the key to the difficulties encountered by courts in dealing with crime.

The murderer, if a member of a prominent family, was certain to have kinsmen among the officers. (We may as well use the present tense in speaking of this, for the same conditions exist to-day, though less pronounced.) His “family,” man, woman and child, stand by him, aid his escape or his defence in the court house. If the criminal, conscious of the supporting influence surrounding him, disdains flight and boldly faces trial, the next move is to secure a jury which will acquit him. It often happens that those interested in the prosecution secretly come to an agreement with the accused and his friends to cease prosecution provided he and his in their turn would do the same to them in cases of their own. It is merely a case of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Citizens who love peace are loath to antagonize an outlaw clan so long as they or theirs are not directly concerned. They have no desire to assist officers in doing their duty, should these wish to do it. To indict men for crime is often a risky thing.

The criminal who has succeeded in defeating justice grows more bold, continues to pursue his career with an enhanced contempt of the law, until, at last, the cup runs over, and men, good and true, rise above self, and for country’s and humanity’s sake take upon themselves the task of restoring peace and order, and summarily cut short the life cycle of the outlaw.

How far such organized bands of murderers have succeeded in overawing the constituted authorities, is illustrated by instances recorded in this volume, where the law, the government itself, actually compromised with the outlaws, promised, yea, granted them immunity from past crimes, only exacting a pledge of better behavior in the future. If a man had committed but one little murder, he was in some danger of a short term in the penitentiary. If he understood his business, instead of stopping at one assassination, he simply continued his murder mill in operation and the authorities would send special ministers and envoys to “treat” with him as a power entitled to respect. Exaggeration? No!