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Officers of the law have actually aided in assassinations, or stood idly by while murders were committed in their presence. Investigation has proven that in every feud-ridden section the entire legal machinery was rotten to the core, perverted to the end and purpose of protecting particular men and of punishing their enemies. Is it any wonder, then, that in such times and under such conditions preaching respect for law is breath wasted?

Sifting the matter down, we find that the chief contributing causes of these feudal troubles, wherever they have occurred, or may again occur, are due directly:—to inefficient, corrupt and depraved officials; to a want of a healthy moral public sentiment, through lack of proper education and religious training; to the fact that the law-abiding element of the feud-ridden counties had so long been domineered over by the criminal class and their parasites and supporters in secret, that they are incapable of rendering any valuable assistance in maintaining the law save in few exceptions, and these few so much in the minority that a reformation is not to be hoped for if left to their own resources; that during all the social chaos attending feudal wars the promiscuous, unrestrained and illegal sale of whiskey added fury, fire and venom to the minds and hearts of murderers. It dragged into the terrible vortex of bloody crime many not directly connected with the feud, but who took advantage of the disturbed social conditions, the state of anarchy, to satisfy their own vicious propensities without fear of interruption and punishment.[4]

The clannishness of the mountaineer has been the subject of much comment. The student of sociology must, therefore, be interested in learning that in a great measure the people of the Kentucky mountains descended from the same stock that formed the noted Scottish clans of old. One need only run over the names of the principal mountain families to recognize their Scot origin. The Scots love the highlands, and to the “highlands” of Kentucky many of them drifted. Scotland had her feuds—those of the Kentucky mountains are nothing more nor less than transplanted Scottish feuds, their continuation having been made possible by the reasons heretofore given.

We believe it germane to the matter under discussion to add that not only feuds, but mobs and the like, are, and ever have been, the direct outgrowth of a lack of confidence of the people in their courts. The shameful nightrider outrages in the western part of Kentucky a few years ago, in a section which had boasted of a civilization superior by far to that of the mountaineers, where schools and churches are to be met with at every corner, were the outcome, so it is claimed, of the failure of the law to deal sternly with the lawless tobacco trust, the “original wrongdoer” in the noted tobacco war. If this were true, if this justified the destruction by incendiaries of millions of dollars’ worth of property, brutal whippings, the indiscriminate slaughter of entire families without regard to age or sex, the butchery of little children (for aiding the tobacco trust, no doubt) then, indeed, is the mountaineer feudist also innocent of wrongdoing; more so, for he, at least, never made war upon suckling infants, nor have women suffered harm, except in one or two instances. Nor is the cultured Blue Grass citizen free to censure him, when he calls to mind the outrages of the toll-gate raids, or takes into account the numerous lynching bees, proceedings from which the mountains have always been practically free.

In view of all this we cannot go far from wrong when we say that the law’s delay, the failure to punish promptly, impartially and severely its infractions, must shoulder the responsibility for all social disturbances, and this is true in New York, in the West, as well as in Kentucky.

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Kentucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies

THE GREAT HATFIELD-McCOY FEUD.

Perhaps no section in the whole United States has ever been the scene of more crime and long-continued defiance of the law than that contiguous to the Tug Fork, one of the tributaries of the Big Sandy river, and which forms the boundary line between West Virginia and Kentucky, separating Logan County, W. Va., from Pike County, Ky.

Many feuds have been fought there, but none equalled in ferocity the bloody Hatfield-McCoy war, during which crimes of the most revolting nature were perpetrated. Indeed, it will be difficult for the reader to believe that the devilish deeds related in this chapter are actually true and did occur in the midst of a civilized country, peopled with Christian men and women, and governed (?) by wholesome laws. Yes, citizens of a common country fought a struggle to the bitter death without hindrance, if not with the actual connivance of those entrusted with the enforcement of law and the maintenance of order, who looked idly upon bloodshed. The flag of anarchy, once unfurled, fluttered unmolested for years. Had the feud broken out suddenly and been quickly suppressed, we should abstain from strictures upon high officials entrusted with the administration and execution of the law. But this American vendetta covered a long period, abating somewhat at times, only to break out anew with increased ferocity. Utter disregard for human life, ruthless, savage cruelty, distinguish this feud from all others and easily give it the front rank.

To add to the horror of it all, came the bitter controversy between the governors of West Virginia and Kentucky, nearly precipitating civil war between the two States, and effectively paralyzing all attempts at concerted action looking toward the capture, trial and punishment of the outlaws, at least for a long time. That the feud is ended now is due largely to the fact that the material upon which it had been feeding for so many years, became exhausted through the pistol, rifle or the knife. But few died of disease, only one was hanged, perhaps the least guilty of them all, for he was a moral degenerate of such little intelligence that under other circumstances he might have escaped the gallows on the ground of mental irresponsibility. The leading spirits of the war were never punished, but rounded out their lives at home unmolested.

The region along the Tug Fork is mountainous, and has not until recently come in touch with the outside world. Its inhabitants for many years knew nothing of schools, or churches. Ignorance prevailed to a truly astonishing degree. Courts exercised no authority; their decrees were laughed at and ridiculed. If a man thought himself aggrieved he sought redress as best suited him. The natives tried cases in their own minds and acted as executioners, using the rifle or the knife. When trials, in rare instances, were resorted to, they more often fanned the flame of hatred than smothered it.

The contending factions in this internecine strife lived on opposite sides of the Tug Fork, a narrow stream. Randall McCoy, the leader or head of the McCoy faction, resided on the Blackberry Branch of Pond Creek in Pike County, Kentucky. Near him, but on the opposite side of Tug Fork, in West Virginia, lived Anderson Hatfield, who had adopted for himself the nom-de-guerre of “Bad Anse” or “Devil Anse,” the