American Experience (1988) s32e01 Episode Script
The Feud
1
♪♪
("Looney Tunes" theme playing)
CHUCK KEENEY:
I first learned about
the Hatfield-McCoy feud
from Bugs Bunny.
That here rabbit critter's
bound to be around here
somewheres.
On account of I sees
his footie-prints.
KEENEY:
When I was a little kid,
I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon
in which there were these two
feuding mountaineer families.
(gunshot, ricochet)
KEENEY:
The Hatfield and McCoy feud
really created the stereotype
of the hillbilly
in the American popular
consciousness.
♪♪
(crowing)
And it was this image
of a simple-minded,
violent, backward people.
(whooping)
DEAN KING:
There's a stereotype
that these were toothless,
moonshining hillbillies taking
potshots at one another,
but it couldn't be further
from the truth.
(gun fires)
NARRATOR:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud
is perhaps the most famous
family conflict
in American history.
(guns firing)
It has become a mythical tale
of jealousy, rage, and revenge.
Yet the events that took place
near the end of the 19th century
in central Appalachia are part
of a much richer
and more complex story
A story of a people's way
of life slipping away
and their struggle to adapt to
forces far beyond their control.
(steam whistle blows)
ALTINA WALLER:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud is
much more
than an Appalachian story.
It's an American story.
ANTHONY HARKINS:
One way to embrace
all the radical changes
that urbanism and industrialism
were bringing
was to define the rural
as not just different,
but in some ways dangerous
and problematic.
ROBERT HUTTON:
We need to understand
that sometimes the people
telling the story about violence
have as much of an agenda
as the people who are acting out
the violence in the first place.
KEENEY:
What you really see is
a story of the dark underbelly
of industrialization,
and how industrialization
impacted rural communities
in America.
♪♪
♪♪
NARRATOR:
The Tug Fork Valley,
deep in the mountains
of central Appalachia,
was the edge of
the American frontier
in the early 1800s.
The Hatfields and the McCoys
were among the earliest
white settlers in the valley,
a rugged and remote region
filled with thick forests,
rocky streams, and steep ridges.
STEVEN STOLL:
The Hatfields and the McCoys
were absolutely identical
to thousands of other families
and extended families
that lived in the mountains
at the same time.
People who had the run
of a great deal of woods
and took from that
all sorts of things
which they lived upon
and which they sold.
KING:
They would hunt
for deer and bear.
They kept hogs,
and they would let
their hogs go out
in-in the woods to forage
before they would take them in
in the fall and slaughter them,
and that's what would keep them
living through the winter.
They wanted that opportunity
to succeed in life,
and that's what they found
in the mountains.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
The Tug Fork formed the border
between the states
of Kentucky and Virginia.
The Hatfields, McCoys,
and other families
settled in the Tug Valley,
on both sides of
the shallow waterway,
a tributary of
the Big Sandy River
that fed into the Ohio.
Anderson Hatfield was born
in 1839
on the Virginia side of the Tug.
One of 11 children, Hatfield was
known as a fierce hunter
He reportedly killed
a mountain lion as a boy
And was said to have been given
the name "Devil Anse"
at an early age.
Randolph McCoy,
also called Randall,
grew up in a family
of 13 children
living a hardscrabble life on a
farm neighboring the Hatfields.
More than a decade older
than Anderson Hatfield,
McCoy later moved
with his wife and family
across the Tug to Kentucky.
KIMBERLY McCOY:
The Tug Valley region was
a tight-knit community.
Family was always important.
You take care of your family
first,
but you also take care
of your neighbors.
♪♪
KING:
The citizens of that valley,
they were intermarried.
The Hatfields and McCoys were
intermarried.
They worked together,
they did business together.
There was a lot of harmony
and strength in this valley.
♪♪
(bugle playing)
NARRATOR:
In April 1861,
the outbreak of the Civil War
ripped apart the bonds of
harmony in the Tug Valley,
between and
even within families.
(bugle playing,
soldiers marching)
On the Virginia side of the Tug,
Anderson Hatfield and
many of his neighbors enlisted
in the Confederate Army
when the state decided
to secede.
Across the river, Kentucky
eventually sided with the Union.
In the McCoy family,
Randolph signed up
with the Confederacy,
while two of his brothers joined
the Union.
HUTTON:
Families and individuals
made decisions for themselves
and ended up making
oppositional decisions
very close to each other.
So you would have
a pro-Union family,
a pro-Confederate family
living cheek-and-jowl.
NARRATOR:
Divisions in the Tug Valley
became even more complicated
when voters in western Virginia
elected in 1863
to leave the Confederacy
and join the Union
as the new state
of West Virginia.
KEENEY:
The Tug Valley was
on the borderlands,
and areas in the Civil War
that were on the borderlands
had a very different experience.
(guns firing, dogs barking)
It became a battleground.
Guerrilla fighters from
both sides went back and forth
looting, killing livestock,
burning down homes
In large part, terrorizing
the local population.
(gun fires)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
To protect his family from raids
occurring on the border,
Hatfield deserted
the regular army
and joined a local
Confederate militia unit.
He soon earned a reputation
for fearlessness.
(wind whistling)
Near the end of the war,
Randolph McCoy's brother,
who had sided with the Union,
was found brutally murdered.
Some McCoys blamed Anderson
Hatfield's guerrilla unit.
♪♪
HUTTON:
Sometimes these acts of war
were based on prior animosity.
Sometimes these acts of war
created the animosity.
One way or the other, though,
a civil war is going to be
very disruptive
for a place like
the Tug River Valley.
♪♪
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
After the fighting ended,
as Anderson Hatfield settled
into family life
with his wife and two sons,
he started cutting down trees
along Grapevine Creek
on the West Virginia side
of the Tug.
WALLER:
When Anderson Hatfield,
Devil Anse,
came home from the Civil War,
he was still living
on his father's land.
His father had quite a few sons,
but for some reason,
the only son he didn't leave
any land to
was his son Anderson.
This is one reason
that Devil Anse had to think
about making a go of life
on his own.
And he said, "All right,
I'm going to start
a timber company."
(sawing wood)
KEENEY:
Devil Anse was not unique
in the sense
that he saw profitability
in the trees around him.
There were many locals
who wanted to profit
from the industrialization boom
that was taking place in the
decades after the Civil War.
(whistle blowing)
NARRATOR:
As Tug Valley residents worked
to reconstruct their community,
industrialization
in the United States
was increasing
at a breakneck pace.
The new economy was dominated
by large corporations
that hired wage laborers
to work their factories.
(machinery clanging)
(birds chirping)
To fuel the growing economy,
investors began eyeing
central Appalachia
for its natural bounty
of timber and mineral reserves.
"The hills and valleys
are full of wealth,"
noted a report about the
resources in West Virginia,
"which only need development
to attract capitalists
like a magnet."
KEENEY:
Industrialization comes along,
and that changes the value
of the land.
The forest is no longer
a place where you go
to get your sustenance;
it's now something that
you destroy to make a profit.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Hatfield began logging
on property he claimed
was his father's.
But two relatives of Randolph
McCoy, who lived nearby,
a young man named Perry Cline
and his brother,
asserted that Hatfield was
trespassing
and illegally timbering
on their land
A 5,000 acre tract
they had inherited
from their father.
KING:
Devil Anse was respected
but feared.
We don't know how much
that came to play
in his transaction
with Perry Cline,
but Perry Cline would have seen
Devil Anse
as a powerful figure
in the community.
HUTTON:
Devil Anse Hatfield
probably considered himself
having earned a certain amount
of authority
just having been in the war,
and it's naturally going
to be premised
on his ability to use violence.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Despite the protests
of the Cline brothers,
Hatfield refused to leave.
They accused him
of taking their inheritance
"by the muzzle of a gun."
KING:
Perry Cline eventually signed
over part of the family property
to Devil Anse.
So whether Devil Anse bullied
him to make that happen,
or took advantage of
a younger, more naïve person,
we really don't know,
but he did sign over
that property.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Cline soon left the Tug Valley,
but he never forgot
the loss of his land
to Anderson Hatfield.
(chopping logs)
Now one of the largest
landowners in the Tug Valley,
Hatfield, despite
being illiterate,
proved to be a savvy and
opportunistic businessman.
He borrowed money
from local merchants
using his new land as security,
purchased equipment on credit,
and hired relatives
and neighbors
to man his timber crew.
His workers floated logs
down the Tug Fork
to the Big Sandy
and on to the Ohio River,
where sawmills churned out
the lumber
that was building America.
STOLL:
Devil Anse was
extremely ambitious
and understood
how things were changing.
I could see how someone
like Devil Anse
could become an entrepreneur
and, in fact,
a small-scale capitalist.
HUTTON:
Devil Anse Hatfield is what
one might call a job creator
in the 1870s.
There's a lot of young men
who are coming from farms that
had gotten busted recently,
either during the war or
because of the recent recession,
and they're becoming
wage earners
under Devil Anse Hatfield.
Hatfield is creating himself as
a sort of fictive father figure,
a kind of patriarch.
And it ends up being
a relatively extensive
familial network,
one that's based as much
on economic relationships
as it is on kinship.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
For Randolph McCoy,
Anderson Hatfield's success
fed a growing
and deep-seated bitterness.
According to legend,
the animosity between
Anderson and Randolph
may have started
when Randolph lost a court case
over a stolen hog.
McCoy had blamed the crime
on one of Hatfield's relatives,
who also was on his timber crew.
KING:
Randall McCoy was known to be
somewhat of a testy, cranky guy.
He was a little bit
more of a follower,
less of a leader
than Devil Anse Hatfield.
I would say he was not as lucky
as Devil Anse.
His business transactions
hadn't gone as well.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
McCoy's only involvement in
timbering had been a failure.
He had joined his father
in a logging venture,
but it fell apart
when his father was accused
of cutting down trees
on a neighbor's property.
WALLER:
In order to settle
the court case,
Randall's father had to sell
the land he did own,
which impoverished the family.
So the experience
that Randall McCoy had
was very unlike
Devil Anse's experience
in the timbering business.
It turned out to be a disaster.
(birds crowing)
BILL RICHARDSON:
Randall is almost the opposite
of Devil Anse Hatfield.
He is a subsistence farmer,
and it is very, very difficult
to eke out a life.
Devil Anse Hatfield becomes
economically successful,
and that never happens
for Randall.
And I think there may have been
a certain jealousy there.
And Randall seems to be someone
who has a chip on his shoulder.
♪♪
(water flowing, sloshing)
NARRATOR:
The prospect of developing
Appalachia's natural resources
took a dramatic turn in 1881,
when a Philadelphia
industrialist journeyed
to a remote region
of central Appalachia
along the Virginia and
southern West Virginia border.
Frederick Kimball,
the vice president
of the newly created
Norfolk and Western Railroad,
had heard about a massive,
13-foot-thick coal seam
in the area
and wanted to inspect it
for himself.
When Kimball saw
the exposed outcropping,
he knew immediately
that this was the future
of the Norfolk and Western.
HUTTON:
The Northeast and the Midwest
have been building
a steel industry
that is powered by coal,
and eventually
Pennsylvania's and Ohio's
and Indiana's coal aren't going
to be enough for them.
So capitalists start to show up
in places like the interior
of eastern Kentucky
and southern West Virginia.
NARRATOR:
The Norfolk and Western
was formed
by taking over a railroad
that ran from the port city
of Norfolk, Virginia,
to the western part
of the state.
Kimball convinced the
railroad's board to build a spur
into the vast, rich coalfields
that ran through much
of southern West Virginia.
The railway, Kimball announced,
would be "prepared
for heavy mineral traffic."
♪♪
KEENEY:
It's difficult
to over exaggerate
the impact of the railroad.
In a place like
the Tug River Valley,
you aren't going to be able
to extract enormous amount
of resources from the area
without the railroad.
So if you're going to get
to the coal,
if you're going to get
to big chunks of timber,
you have to have a railroad
to go in that region
in order to get
the materials out.
NARRATOR:
Norfolk and Western crews began
to lay down tracks
before the end of the year.
HUTTON:
In some of the more sparsely
populated parts of Appalachia,
like the Tug River Valley,
you're going to see industry
showing up very quickly
in a place that had previously
been predominantly agricultural.
This is going to completely
change Appalachia.
♪♪
(birds chirping)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 1882,
families from both sides of the
Tug gathered for Election Day
at a polling place
in Pike County, Kentucky.
(people chattering, laughing)
Like election days
all around the country,
it was a festive
and volatile occasion.
KING:
Election days were important
in this area.
It's when this
hard-working community,
isolated by these hills,
came together.
And courting went on,
business went on,
political machinations were
at work.
HUTTON:
Election days were often
very raucous and heated affairs.
This was when there were
a lot of young men
gathering close together,
and there was a lot of alcohol
fueling whatever tensions were
there previously.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
"Strife and ambition were high"
on that Pike County
Election Day,
a resident recalled.
Late in the afternoon,
a squabble over a small debt
broke out
between a distant relation
of Anderson Hatfield
and Randolph McCoy's son,
Tolbert.
WALLER:
Tolbert McCoy was
an angry young man
because of his prospects
for the future.
Unlike Devil Anse's crew,
who were now doing well
and getting land, he wasn't.
He was a tenant farmer.
HARKINS:
There was relatively little
tillable land to begin with,
and as they had large families,
there was less land available.
And so what was initially plenty
to be, you know,
perfectly content on
was increasingly being pinched
as time went on.
WALLER:
You have this younger generation
who's extremely frustrated.
They were being restricted
from the things
that they thought
they should be able to have.
They didn't understand
the economic forces behind it;
they're going to be worse off
than their parents,
and they know it.
NARRATOR:
Tolbert McCoy had also had
a recent confrontation
with Anderson Hatfield
that would lead
to devastating consequences.
Tolbert and
several of his brothers
had arrested Hatfield's
eldest son
on a concealed-weapons charge
and were taking him
to a jail in Kentucky
when Hatfield and a gang
of armed men intervened.
RICHARDSON:
Nobody is killed,
but one of the stories is
is that Devil Anse made
Tolbert get down on his knees
and cursed him
and humiliated him.
If you're seen as being weak,
especially as a man,
that's the worst thing
you can be in this culture.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Back at the election day
celebration,
a crowd gathered as Tolbert
and Hatfield's relative
continued to argue.
(crowd clamoring, dog barking)
Then, another Hatfield
intervened.
Ellison Hatfield was bigger
and stronger than Tolbert.
More importantly, he was
Anderson Hatfield's brother.
KING:
Here you have Tolbert staring
down Devil Anse's brother,
with everybody circled up there
watching to see
what's going to happen.
And because of
the family enmity,
this took on a larger life.
WALLER:
Tolbert McCoy saw
in Ellison Hatfield
all the things that
he would like to be:
Ellison had land, Ellison was
an extremely respected member
of the community.
Put that together
with Tolbert's humiliation
by Devil Anse
not too long before,
and you can see
that rage emerging
in a very deadly way.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
After being confronted
by Ellison Hatfield,
Tolbert McCoy attacked him
with a knife.
Though unarmed,
Hatfield fought back.
♪♪
Two of Tolbert's brothers
joined in,
stabbing Ellison 27 times.
Then, as he picked up a rock
to hit Tolbert in the head
(gun fires, shot echoes)
one of the McCoy brothers shot
Ellison in the back,
severely wounding him.
The McCoy brothers were
quickly apprehended,
and two Kentucky constables
were assigned
to take them to the jail
in the county seat of Pikeville
the next morning.
WALLER:
Although Devil Anse wasn't there
that day,
he was soon informed.
The problem for him was
that this had happened on the
Kentucky side of the river,
and if the McCoy boys were taken
to Pikeville for trial
Which was not even considered
part of the Tug Valley,
and it was the Kentucky side
I think Devil Anse felt that
they probably would not be
found guilty.
NARRATOR:
Hatfield organized
an armed posse
and started in pursuit.
McCOY:
Devil Anse had his own band
of 20-plus men
that worked the timber
around his home place,
and that became a militia
pretty quickly.
Loyalty was everything
to the mountain folks,
and they prided themselves
on that.
WALLER:
Devil Anse's timber crew came
to be seen as his family.
The fact that they came
to his support so quickly
and without question
tells us a lot
about what they thought of him.
(insects chirping)
NARRATOR:
The posse seized
the three McCoys,
brought them to West Virginia,
and locked them up
in an abandoned schoolhouse.
Hatfield warned his captives
that if Ellison died,
so would they.
(thunder rumbling, rain pouring)
♪♪
That night, in the pouring rain,
Sally McCoy,
the three boys' mother,
crossed the rain-swollen
Tug Fork
to plead for mercy for her boys.
McCOY:
Sally was a strong woman.
She went right
into the den of the devil,
and she begged
for her sons' lives.
She wanted justice to take place
in a Pike County court,
and it didn't go down that way.
(thunder rumbling)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Ellison died two days later.
Under the cover of darkness,
Hatfield and his posse marched
the McCoy brothers
to the Kentucky side
of the river.
They blindfolded them
and tied them to some pawpaw
bushes on the riverbank.
Then, they opened fire.
(guns firing)
(gunfire continues)
RICHARDSON:
You could hear the shots ring
throughout the mountains.
(guns firing)
It was a death knell.
(gun fires, echoes)
NARRATOR:
"We found my three brothers
tied together,"
remembered McCoy's eldest son.
"My little brother was
on his knees,
the top of his head shot off."
♪♪
(rain pattering, dripping)
WALLER:
Randall McCoy tried
to raise a posse
to get revenge on the Hatfields,
but his wife Sally said,
"Let it go.
It'll just make things
much worse."
RICHARDSON:
I think a lot of people saw
the killing of those three boys
as pretty much an eye
for an eye.
You don't see a lot of upheaval
and-and people coming
to the defense of the McCoys
at that time.
So it was either they
didn't want to get involved
or they saw it as justified.
(rain pattering)
NARRATOR:
In one of the first news reports
of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict,
the "New York Times" described
"a bloody affray" in Pike County
as a part of a list of other
crimes from around the nation.
RICHARDSON:
When the Hatfield-McCoy conflict
is going on,
there are very similar conflicts
out West
The O.K. Corral, Jesse James,
those sort of things.
And America romanticizes,
even at the time,
the things that are going on
in the West.
This eastern conflict
that's so similar,
it becomes
a very pejorative thing.
America looks down on it.
NARRATOR:
"More bloodshed is expected,"
the "New York Times" article
concluded,
"as the members of the families
are numerous and vindictive."
(machinery clanking)
STOLL:
Economic growth is not something
that serves the needs
or the interests of everybody,
but it's presented to us
in a universal way.
It's about greater consumption.
It's about turning nature
into wealth.
It's about a notion of progress
that comes from the spread
of capitalism.
(train whistle blowing)
NARRATOR:
In 1884, two years after the
murder of the McCoy brothers,
the Norfolk and Western made
its first shipment of coal
from southern West Virginia.
But Frederick Kimball,
now president of the railroad,
had bigger plans.
He soon announced the building
of an extension line
west to the Ohio River.
The route was still
to be determined,
but it was headed
toward the Tug Valley.
Outside investors began
to clamor for titles
to land in the area.
Their agents swarmed
into the backcountry,
buying property for as little
as a dollar an acre.
In Kentucky,
Pike County native John Mayo
recognized the wealth lying
just under the surface
of the mountain farms
where he grew up.
A former schoolteacher,
he traveled hundreds of miles
across the region
to persuade families to sell him
the mineral rights
to the land.
♪♪
Mayo used a deceptively simple
legal construct,
called a broad-form deed,
that granted rights
to natural resources
in, on, and under the land.
♪♪
STOLL:
The way that mountain households
understood this offer
was that they had won
a great victory.
They were going to be paid
something
for the coal
underneath their feet,
and they were going to be able
to remain there
and live as they saw fit.
What they did not understand
was what it would mean
to extract that coal,
because in the fine print
of these contracts,
it said that the coal companies
could do anything necessary
in order to extract it.
They could build roads,
they could cut down the trees,
and they, in fact, could come
right up to the cabin.
♪♪
(loud thumping)
NARRATOR:
Land prices
in the Tug Valley soared
in anticipation of the railroad,
and large corporations began
vying for property.
The increased competition
undercut Hatfield's
timber business.
WALLER:
The merchants in Logan County,
who had been so willing
to fund Devil Anse's
timbering operations
when it benefited them,
now begin to see it as a problem
as they were trying to attract
larger companies
from outside the area.
So they took him to court
to collect
what Devil Anse owed them.
And it really bit
into Devil Anse's business.
NARRATOR:
As Hatfield faced
increased financial pressure,
an old nemesis sought to take
advantage of his situation.
It had been nearly 15 years
since Perry Cline lost his land
to Anderson Hatfield.
Cline had moved out of
the Tug Valley to Pikeville,
where he started
several businesses
and served as deputy sheriff
before becoming an attorney.
Cline, who had been a member of
the Kentucky state legislature,
was now part of the inner circle
of Pike County's local elite.
HUTTON:
Perry Cline is what
one might call a middleman.
He knows the terrain,
he knows who can be convinced,
he knows who cannot be,
and he's the one
who seems to have
a certain sense
of what's going to happen
in the near future.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
Someone like Cline
must have had a hunch
that the most likely place
for the Norfolk and Western
to run its line was along
the Tug Fork in West Virginia
The very land that Hatfield had
taken from him a decade before.
But Cline had more than
just land issues with Hatfield.
His sister had married
Randolph McCoy's brother,
the Union soldier believed
to have been killed
by Hatfield's guerrilla group,
and Cline had become close
to the McCoy family.
KING:
Randall McCoy turns
to Perry Cline,
who has political clout
and-and the capability
to get the-the wheels
of justice turning.
Now Perry Cline is going
to become the leader
in the confrontation
with the Hatfields.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
In late November 1886,
after four years
of relative calm,
violence between the Hatfields
and McCoys resurfaced
when 22-year-old Cap Hatfield,
one of Anderson's sons,
stirred things up.
"Cap is simply a bad young man,"
a reporter later wrote.
Even Cap's uncle singled him out
as being "trouble"
from the start.
(wind blowing)
After a violent altercation,
Cap allegedly shot and killed
Randolph McCoy's nephew
as he was attempting
to escape to Kentucky
by swimming across the Tug Fork.
(gun fires repeatedly)
KING:
Randall McCoy has lost
another relation.
He turns to Perry Cline,
and Cline is looking for
an opportunity to get revenge.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Instead of issuing an arrest
warrant for the recent killing,
Cline revived the
five-year-old case
against Anderson Hatfield
and his posse
for the murder of
the three McCoy brothers.
But Cline needed authority
to pursue the Hatfields
across state lines.
He turned to Kentucky's
newly elected governor,
Simon Bolivar Buckner.
Not long before
Buckner's election,
a geological survey had
identified
an enormous amount of coal
in eastern Kentucky.
This mountainous
and remote region,
which largely had been ignored
by state politicians,
was now seen
as vitally important.
HUTTON:
Simon Buckner sees a future
that's going to be based
on steel and coal
and steam power,
and the story he's trying to
tell is that eastern Kentucky
is a place that is primitive
and in need of help.
The best way
of bringing about that help
is bringing a more vigorous,
capitalist, industrial economy
to the area.
That's Buckner's main goal.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
Within days
of Buckner's inauguration,
Cline met with the governor.
He pressed him to actively
prosecute the case
against the Hatfields
and to increase the reward
for their capture to $500 each.
♪♪
WALLER:
At this time,
there were other Kentucky feuds
that had hit the newspapers,
and eastern Kentucky was getting
this reputation
for being this violent place,
and that might discourage
outside companies
from coming in.
Cline went to
the governor of Kentucky
and said, "Look,
we can't attract industry
"unless we get rid
of these terrible marauders,
the Hatfields."
NARRATOR:
Buckner agreed,
and four days later
he sent an extradition request
to the governor of West Virginia
to hand over Hatfield
and his posse
to face charges in Kentucky.
♪♪
When news spread of the call
for extraditing the Hatfields,
Logan County residents lobbied
on their behalf.
One praised the Hatfields
as "the very best
and law-abiding citizens
of that county."
After several weeks
of deliberation,
West Virginia's governor denied
Buckner's request.
♪♪
A frustrated Perry Cline,
without legal authority,
sent a special deputy
into West Virginia
to capture the Hatfields.
Frank Phillips,
known as "Bad Frank,"
was aggressive and relentless.
Phillips started mounting raids
across the Tug.
He soon arrested two
of Hatfield's associates
and brought them
across the river
to the Pikeville jail.
RICHARDSON:
Kentucky, through
Bad Frank Phillips,
had basically said,
"Tough, we're not going
to adhere to the law.
We're going to do what it takes
to bring you to justice."
And that was a game-changer
for the Hatfields.
WALLER:
It's not really sanctioned
by the state
Although I'm sure
Devil Anse saw it that way.
Here was the State of Kentucky
after them,
and I think this
really scared them.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
On the night
of New Year's Day 1888,
a nearly full moon illuminated
the fresh snow
blanketing the ridges and
hollows of the Tug Fork Valley.
The events of that evening
would mark a turning point
in tensions
between the families.
♪♪
At the McCoy home,
Randolph, his wife,
and several of their children
and grandchildren
had gone to bed.
♪♪
Suddenly,
their watchdog started barking.
(dog barking)
A voice yelled out
for McCoy to give himself up.
A group of armed men,
led by Cap Hatfield,
had surrounded the house.
WALLER:
It's Devil Anse's sons
and some of his
more aggressive crew members
who get together
I'm pretty sure without
Devil Anse's knowledge
And decide, "All right, we need
to do something about this."
KING:
The Hatfields realize
that pressure is building
against them,
and they decide that
if they can take Randall McCoy
out of the equation,
that will somehow end the feud,
and there won't be any reason
to come after them anymore.
(guns firing, echoing,
bullets hitting wood)
NARRATOR:
Gunshots ripped into the cabin.
Randolph started firing back.
(gun firing repeatedly)
(gunshots echoing)
Then, the attackers set
the McCoy cabin on fire.
(flames crackling)
Randolph's son and daughter
were shot down
as they ran to escape
the flames.
His wife, Sally, was struck
unconscious with a rifle butt.
Randolph managed to escape.
(whistling)
The Hatfield party withdrew as
the house burned to the ground.
"We have made a bad job of it,"
one said.
"There will be trouble
over this."
♪♪
McCoy returned to find two of
his children dead in the snow
and his wife critically injured.
KING:
This is a catastrophic,
violent event
beyond anything
he's seen before.
This was ratcheting up the feud
to a whole 'nother level
of brutality, of violence,
of meanness.
McCOY:
I think that in a lot of ways
the Hatfields were condemned
at that moment.
They were condemned
to the brutality
and the savageness
that would live on
through that one event.
♪♪
(gun fires, carriage rumbling)
NARRATOR:
Over the next few weeks,
Frank Phillips conducted
over a half-dozen more raids
into West Virginia.
(guns firing)
He killed one of
Hatfield's most trusted allies
and captured six more men
on the wanted list.
(guns firing)
♪♪
The "New York Times" called the
feud "A War of Extermination."
The governors of West Virginia
and Kentucky,
stirred up by the press frenzy,
put their state militias
on high alert.
♪♪
Anderson Hatfield,
in addition to worrying about
the safety of his family,
was fighting
for his financial survival.
He owed hundreds of dollars,
payable immediately,
on old debt cases
that had been rushed to trial.
WALLER:
Devil Anse was really forced
into selling his land,
which he did for very little,
especially compared
to what it would become
in just a few years
when the railroad came through
and the coal mines came in,
which is really what Perry Cline
and his allies in Pikeville
had been hoping for all along.
NARRATOR:
Just four weeks after
the New Year's Day raid,
Hatfield sold his lands
by the Tug River
to a coal agent who also agreed
to pay off his debts.
Like many of his neighbors,
Hatfield had lost his land
to outside capitalists.
♪♪
WALLER:
It seemed to symbolize
a conflict
between folks trying
to preserve local autonomy
and power and control
versus the power of the state
and the power of the modernizers
and the industrialists
to come in and take control.
The big capitalists destroy
the little ones.
And I think this is what was
happening to Devil Anse.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Hatfield moved higher up
in the mountains,
to land he purchased 20 miles
north of the Kentucky border
in Logan County.
He built a sturdy,
windowless fort near his cabin
and posted armed men
at each corner of the property.
(wind blowing)
(birds chirping, water flowing)
In the late summer of 1888,
six months after
selling his land,
Hatfield received word that
a reporter from New York City
wanted to interview him.
For journalist T.C. Crawford
of the "New York World,"
an audience
with the infamous feudist
would be a major scoop.
"No one had seen or described
Anse Hatfield, his fort,
and his guard of armed men,"
Crawford noted.
They were "the talk and terror
of the country."
HUTTON:
Crawford is practically the
first northeastern reporter
to get firsthand knowledge
of what's going on
in the Tug River Valley.
The story he ends up telling is
as much fancy as it is fact,
and that's not necessarily
because he was a bad reporter.
T.C. Crawford is typical
of a journalist working
in what's going to very soon be
called yellow journalism.
The important thing wasn't
so much to get the facts right
as it was to tell an elaborate,
entertaining story.
NARRATOR:
The first of three articles
appeared
on Sunday, October 7, 1888.
"I have been away in Murderland
for nearly ten days,"
Crawford wrote.
"No one would believe that
there is in this country
such a barbarous, uncivilized,
and wholly savage region."
The series continued
for three consecutive Sundays,
reaching hundreds of thousands
of readers.
The "Cincinnati Enquirer"
picked it up
and took the story national,
calling Hatfield
the "outlaw king"
and giving him equal billing
with Jack the Ripper.
RICHARDSON:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud was
a media sensation.
Everyday people would pick up
the newspaper
wanting to read about
what was going on
in this little part of America.
It is a story of violence
and it's a story of retribution.
But also I think
it's a story of passion.
I think people can identify
with that.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Crawford soon published
the series
in "An American Vendetta,"
the first book to tell the tale
of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
♪♪
HARKINS:
I think the politics of the word
"feud" are quite important.
It reinforces the notions
of violence,
of a certain irrationality.
Oftentimes
these feuds get framed
as having no real reason
to exist
other than a sort of
innate violence
and temperament of the people.
STOLL:
It was a disaster
for mountain people to be turned
into this kind of lurid,
violent literature
in which there was
no social content whatsoever
or attention paid
to their motives.
They became two-dimensional
and entirely the victims
of the journalists
and the perceptions
of the readers,
which were that
these people were savages,
that they were living
in the past,
backward, incapable
of historical progress.
♪♪
HUTTON:
It's a sort of propaganda,
in a way.
It's a justification
for what's about to happen,
because of capitalists
who are making their way
into the interior
of eastern Kentucky
and southern West Virginia.
It's not necessarily
a conspiracy
between the newspapers
and the railroads
and the coal companies,
but there is
a symbiotic relationship
between the press
and big business.
And the story that people like
Crawford are trying to tell
is that these are people
who need to be fixed.
NARRATOR:
"This country
is wonderfully rich,"
Crawford proclaimed
to the world.
"And needs only a railroad
to come up through it
to drive out this outlaw class."
♪♪
(hammering, metallic clinking)
By 1890, Norfolk and Western
construction crews
were laying track
for their new extension line
to the Ohio River.
As predicted, it ran
right through the bottomland
along the Tug Fork
in West Virginia,
cutting through
Hatfield's former land.
♪♪
(train rumbling)
Soon, massive timbering
operations
would turn the mountains
into an alien landscape,
and company-owned coal camps
would spread
along the creek bottoms
and hillsides
where there once had been farms.
♪♪
Notices in a local paper
warned people not to trespass
on recently acquired lands,
including over 1,300 acres
on the Tug River
purchased from
Anderson Hatfield.
♪♪
KEENEY:
In the span of one generation,
families went from being able to
roam anywhere they wanted to go,
owning their own homes,
having their own land,
to living on
someone else's land,
living in a company house,
not being able to go
wherever they wanted to go.
It's not just that
industrialization
and the way in which
they took the land
stripped people
of their way of life,
it also in some ways
stripped them
of their identity.
It's a complete loss of control
over your own destiny.
♪♪
STOLL:
There is an explicit part of the
urban narrative for the feud,
which says that industrial
extraction is, in fact,
bringing them
into the civilized world.
It's not ruining
an older way of life;
it's replacing it with
something which they badly need.
The feud itself becomes evidence
that the extractive economy
moving into the mountains
is doing them all a great favor.
♪♪
(train chugging)
NARRATOR:
As industry invaded
the Tug Valley,
Hatfields, McCoys,
and other mountain families
either found ways to adapt
to the new economic
and social order
or chose to move
out of Appalachia altogether,
seeking factory jobs in cities
or opportunities out West.
♪♪
Randolph McCoy lived out his
remaining years in Pikeville,
where he operated a ferry.
The trauma of the feud
haunted him,
and he told his story
to whomever would listen.
He died at the age of 88
in 1914.
♪♪
Seven years later,
thousands of people attended
Anderson Hatfield's funeral.
By this time, many members
of the Hatfield family,
there mourning his death,
had reinvented themselves.
They had successfully
become part
of the area's growing
middle class
as coal company employees,
politicians, and lawyers.
♪♪
To celebrate the memory
of their patriarch,
the family later erected
a life-size marble statue
over Anderson Hatfield's grave.
McCOY:
A lot of people viewed us
as uneducated people, savages,
and that really has never been
the case at all.
People can call us
whatever they want,
but we've always been
very proud people,
very proud of our heritage,
and very proud
of our home place.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Sparked in large part by reports
of the Hatfield-McCoy feud,
the image of the hillbilly
would permeate
American popular culture.
♪♪
KEENEY:
The Hatfield and McCoy feud
created the idea of
this violent, backward,
inbred type of culture
that supposedly existed in
this isolated pocket of America.
♪♪
RICHARDSON:
A lot of people ask me,
"Who are the winners and
who are the losers in the feud?"
In the long term, the people of
Appalachia have been the losers,
because the negative opinions
that the feud created
is something that we live with
even today.
♪♪
STOLL:
The feud feeds into the notion
of people who are
unredeemable
♪♪
And that the poverty
in Appalachia
is often not explained
as the outcome of
industrial development itself.
Their poverty is thrown back
at them
as their own fault.
And I do think that
that was absolutely implicit
and even explicit
in the way in which
the feud has come down to us.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
("Looney Tunes" theme playing)
CHUCK KEENEY:
I first learned about
the Hatfield-McCoy feud
from Bugs Bunny.
That here rabbit critter's
bound to be around here
somewheres.
On account of I sees
his footie-prints.
KEENEY:
When I was a little kid,
I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon
in which there were these two
feuding mountaineer families.
(gunshot, ricochet)
KEENEY:
The Hatfield and McCoy feud
really created the stereotype
of the hillbilly
in the American popular
consciousness.
♪♪
(crowing)
And it was this image
of a simple-minded,
violent, backward people.
(whooping)
DEAN KING:
There's a stereotype
that these were toothless,
moonshining hillbillies taking
potshots at one another,
but it couldn't be further
from the truth.
(gun fires)
NARRATOR:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud
is perhaps the most famous
family conflict
in American history.
(guns firing)
It has become a mythical tale
of jealousy, rage, and revenge.
Yet the events that took place
near the end of the 19th century
in central Appalachia are part
of a much richer
and more complex story
A story of a people's way
of life slipping away
and their struggle to adapt to
forces far beyond their control.
(steam whistle blows)
ALTINA WALLER:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud is
much more
than an Appalachian story.
It's an American story.
ANTHONY HARKINS:
One way to embrace
all the radical changes
that urbanism and industrialism
were bringing
was to define the rural
as not just different,
but in some ways dangerous
and problematic.
ROBERT HUTTON:
We need to understand
that sometimes the people
telling the story about violence
have as much of an agenda
as the people who are acting out
the violence in the first place.
KEENEY:
What you really see is
a story of the dark underbelly
of industrialization,
and how industrialization
impacted rural communities
in America.
♪♪
♪♪
NARRATOR:
The Tug Fork Valley,
deep in the mountains
of central Appalachia,
was the edge of
the American frontier
in the early 1800s.
The Hatfields and the McCoys
were among the earliest
white settlers in the valley,
a rugged and remote region
filled with thick forests,
rocky streams, and steep ridges.
STEVEN STOLL:
The Hatfields and the McCoys
were absolutely identical
to thousands of other families
and extended families
that lived in the mountains
at the same time.
People who had the run
of a great deal of woods
and took from that
all sorts of things
which they lived upon
and which they sold.
KING:
They would hunt
for deer and bear.
They kept hogs,
and they would let
their hogs go out
in-in the woods to forage
before they would take them in
in the fall and slaughter them,
and that's what would keep them
living through the winter.
They wanted that opportunity
to succeed in life,
and that's what they found
in the mountains.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
The Tug Fork formed the border
between the states
of Kentucky and Virginia.
The Hatfields, McCoys,
and other families
settled in the Tug Valley,
on both sides of
the shallow waterway,
a tributary of
the Big Sandy River
that fed into the Ohio.
Anderson Hatfield was born
in 1839
on the Virginia side of the Tug.
One of 11 children, Hatfield was
known as a fierce hunter
He reportedly killed
a mountain lion as a boy
And was said to have been given
the name "Devil Anse"
at an early age.
Randolph McCoy,
also called Randall,
grew up in a family
of 13 children
living a hardscrabble life on a
farm neighboring the Hatfields.
More than a decade older
than Anderson Hatfield,
McCoy later moved
with his wife and family
across the Tug to Kentucky.
KIMBERLY McCOY:
The Tug Valley region was
a tight-knit community.
Family was always important.
You take care of your family
first,
but you also take care
of your neighbors.
♪♪
KING:
The citizens of that valley,
they were intermarried.
The Hatfields and McCoys were
intermarried.
They worked together,
they did business together.
There was a lot of harmony
and strength in this valley.
♪♪
(bugle playing)
NARRATOR:
In April 1861,
the outbreak of the Civil War
ripped apart the bonds of
harmony in the Tug Valley,
between and
even within families.
(bugle playing,
soldiers marching)
On the Virginia side of the Tug,
Anderson Hatfield and
many of his neighbors enlisted
in the Confederate Army
when the state decided
to secede.
Across the river, Kentucky
eventually sided with the Union.
In the McCoy family,
Randolph signed up
with the Confederacy,
while two of his brothers joined
the Union.
HUTTON:
Families and individuals
made decisions for themselves
and ended up making
oppositional decisions
very close to each other.
So you would have
a pro-Union family,
a pro-Confederate family
living cheek-and-jowl.
NARRATOR:
Divisions in the Tug Valley
became even more complicated
when voters in western Virginia
elected in 1863
to leave the Confederacy
and join the Union
as the new state
of West Virginia.
KEENEY:
The Tug Valley was
on the borderlands,
and areas in the Civil War
that were on the borderlands
had a very different experience.
(guns firing, dogs barking)
It became a battleground.
Guerrilla fighters from
both sides went back and forth
looting, killing livestock,
burning down homes
In large part, terrorizing
the local population.
(gun fires)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
To protect his family from raids
occurring on the border,
Hatfield deserted
the regular army
and joined a local
Confederate militia unit.
He soon earned a reputation
for fearlessness.
(wind whistling)
Near the end of the war,
Randolph McCoy's brother,
who had sided with the Union,
was found brutally murdered.
Some McCoys blamed Anderson
Hatfield's guerrilla unit.
♪♪
HUTTON:
Sometimes these acts of war
were based on prior animosity.
Sometimes these acts of war
created the animosity.
One way or the other, though,
a civil war is going to be
very disruptive
for a place like
the Tug River Valley.
♪♪
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
After the fighting ended,
as Anderson Hatfield settled
into family life
with his wife and two sons,
he started cutting down trees
along Grapevine Creek
on the West Virginia side
of the Tug.
WALLER:
When Anderson Hatfield,
Devil Anse,
came home from the Civil War,
he was still living
on his father's land.
His father had quite a few sons,
but for some reason,
the only son he didn't leave
any land to
was his son Anderson.
This is one reason
that Devil Anse had to think
about making a go of life
on his own.
And he said, "All right,
I'm going to start
a timber company."
(sawing wood)
KEENEY:
Devil Anse was not unique
in the sense
that he saw profitability
in the trees around him.
There were many locals
who wanted to profit
from the industrialization boom
that was taking place in the
decades after the Civil War.
(whistle blowing)
NARRATOR:
As Tug Valley residents worked
to reconstruct their community,
industrialization
in the United States
was increasing
at a breakneck pace.
The new economy was dominated
by large corporations
that hired wage laborers
to work their factories.
(machinery clanging)
(birds chirping)
To fuel the growing economy,
investors began eyeing
central Appalachia
for its natural bounty
of timber and mineral reserves.
"The hills and valleys
are full of wealth,"
noted a report about the
resources in West Virginia,
"which only need development
to attract capitalists
like a magnet."
KEENEY:
Industrialization comes along,
and that changes the value
of the land.
The forest is no longer
a place where you go
to get your sustenance;
it's now something that
you destroy to make a profit.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Hatfield began logging
on property he claimed
was his father's.
But two relatives of Randolph
McCoy, who lived nearby,
a young man named Perry Cline
and his brother,
asserted that Hatfield was
trespassing
and illegally timbering
on their land
A 5,000 acre tract
they had inherited
from their father.
KING:
Devil Anse was respected
but feared.
We don't know how much
that came to play
in his transaction
with Perry Cline,
but Perry Cline would have seen
Devil Anse
as a powerful figure
in the community.
HUTTON:
Devil Anse Hatfield
probably considered himself
having earned a certain amount
of authority
just having been in the war,
and it's naturally going
to be premised
on his ability to use violence.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Despite the protests
of the Cline brothers,
Hatfield refused to leave.
They accused him
of taking their inheritance
"by the muzzle of a gun."
KING:
Perry Cline eventually signed
over part of the family property
to Devil Anse.
So whether Devil Anse bullied
him to make that happen,
or took advantage of
a younger, more naïve person,
we really don't know,
but he did sign over
that property.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Cline soon left the Tug Valley,
but he never forgot
the loss of his land
to Anderson Hatfield.
(chopping logs)
Now one of the largest
landowners in the Tug Valley,
Hatfield, despite
being illiterate,
proved to be a savvy and
opportunistic businessman.
He borrowed money
from local merchants
using his new land as security,
purchased equipment on credit,
and hired relatives
and neighbors
to man his timber crew.
His workers floated logs
down the Tug Fork
to the Big Sandy
and on to the Ohio River,
where sawmills churned out
the lumber
that was building America.
STOLL:
Devil Anse was
extremely ambitious
and understood
how things were changing.
I could see how someone
like Devil Anse
could become an entrepreneur
and, in fact,
a small-scale capitalist.
HUTTON:
Devil Anse Hatfield is what
one might call a job creator
in the 1870s.
There's a lot of young men
who are coming from farms that
had gotten busted recently,
either during the war or
because of the recent recession,
and they're becoming
wage earners
under Devil Anse Hatfield.
Hatfield is creating himself as
a sort of fictive father figure,
a kind of patriarch.
And it ends up being
a relatively extensive
familial network,
one that's based as much
on economic relationships
as it is on kinship.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
For Randolph McCoy,
Anderson Hatfield's success
fed a growing
and deep-seated bitterness.
According to legend,
the animosity between
Anderson and Randolph
may have started
when Randolph lost a court case
over a stolen hog.
McCoy had blamed the crime
on one of Hatfield's relatives,
who also was on his timber crew.
KING:
Randall McCoy was known to be
somewhat of a testy, cranky guy.
He was a little bit
more of a follower,
less of a leader
than Devil Anse Hatfield.
I would say he was not as lucky
as Devil Anse.
His business transactions
hadn't gone as well.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
McCoy's only involvement in
timbering had been a failure.
He had joined his father
in a logging venture,
but it fell apart
when his father was accused
of cutting down trees
on a neighbor's property.
WALLER:
In order to settle
the court case,
Randall's father had to sell
the land he did own,
which impoverished the family.
So the experience
that Randall McCoy had
was very unlike
Devil Anse's experience
in the timbering business.
It turned out to be a disaster.
(birds crowing)
BILL RICHARDSON:
Randall is almost the opposite
of Devil Anse Hatfield.
He is a subsistence farmer,
and it is very, very difficult
to eke out a life.
Devil Anse Hatfield becomes
economically successful,
and that never happens
for Randall.
And I think there may have been
a certain jealousy there.
And Randall seems to be someone
who has a chip on his shoulder.
♪♪
(water flowing, sloshing)
NARRATOR:
The prospect of developing
Appalachia's natural resources
took a dramatic turn in 1881,
when a Philadelphia
industrialist journeyed
to a remote region
of central Appalachia
along the Virginia and
southern West Virginia border.
Frederick Kimball,
the vice president
of the newly created
Norfolk and Western Railroad,
had heard about a massive,
13-foot-thick coal seam
in the area
and wanted to inspect it
for himself.
When Kimball saw
the exposed outcropping,
he knew immediately
that this was the future
of the Norfolk and Western.
HUTTON:
The Northeast and the Midwest
have been building
a steel industry
that is powered by coal,
and eventually
Pennsylvania's and Ohio's
and Indiana's coal aren't going
to be enough for them.
So capitalists start to show up
in places like the interior
of eastern Kentucky
and southern West Virginia.
NARRATOR:
The Norfolk and Western
was formed
by taking over a railroad
that ran from the port city
of Norfolk, Virginia,
to the western part
of the state.
Kimball convinced the
railroad's board to build a spur
into the vast, rich coalfields
that ran through much
of southern West Virginia.
The railway, Kimball announced,
would be "prepared
for heavy mineral traffic."
♪♪
KEENEY:
It's difficult
to over exaggerate
the impact of the railroad.
In a place like
the Tug River Valley,
you aren't going to be able
to extract enormous amount
of resources from the area
without the railroad.
So if you're going to get
to the coal,
if you're going to get
to big chunks of timber,
you have to have a railroad
to go in that region
in order to get
the materials out.
NARRATOR:
Norfolk and Western crews began
to lay down tracks
before the end of the year.
HUTTON:
In some of the more sparsely
populated parts of Appalachia,
like the Tug River Valley,
you're going to see industry
showing up very quickly
in a place that had previously
been predominantly agricultural.
This is going to completely
change Appalachia.
♪♪
(birds chirping)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 1882,
families from both sides of the
Tug gathered for Election Day
at a polling place
in Pike County, Kentucky.
(people chattering, laughing)
Like election days
all around the country,
it was a festive
and volatile occasion.
KING:
Election days were important
in this area.
It's when this
hard-working community,
isolated by these hills,
came together.
And courting went on,
business went on,
political machinations were
at work.
HUTTON:
Election days were often
very raucous and heated affairs.
This was when there were
a lot of young men
gathering close together,
and there was a lot of alcohol
fueling whatever tensions were
there previously.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
"Strife and ambition were high"
on that Pike County
Election Day,
a resident recalled.
Late in the afternoon,
a squabble over a small debt
broke out
between a distant relation
of Anderson Hatfield
and Randolph McCoy's son,
Tolbert.
WALLER:
Tolbert McCoy was
an angry young man
because of his prospects
for the future.
Unlike Devil Anse's crew,
who were now doing well
and getting land, he wasn't.
He was a tenant farmer.
HARKINS:
There was relatively little
tillable land to begin with,
and as they had large families,
there was less land available.
And so what was initially plenty
to be, you know,
perfectly content on
was increasingly being pinched
as time went on.
WALLER:
You have this younger generation
who's extremely frustrated.
They were being restricted
from the things
that they thought
they should be able to have.
They didn't understand
the economic forces behind it;
they're going to be worse off
than their parents,
and they know it.
NARRATOR:
Tolbert McCoy had also had
a recent confrontation
with Anderson Hatfield
that would lead
to devastating consequences.
Tolbert and
several of his brothers
had arrested Hatfield's
eldest son
on a concealed-weapons charge
and were taking him
to a jail in Kentucky
when Hatfield and a gang
of armed men intervened.
RICHARDSON:
Nobody is killed,
but one of the stories is
is that Devil Anse made
Tolbert get down on his knees
and cursed him
and humiliated him.
If you're seen as being weak,
especially as a man,
that's the worst thing
you can be in this culture.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Back at the election day
celebration,
a crowd gathered as Tolbert
and Hatfield's relative
continued to argue.
(crowd clamoring, dog barking)
Then, another Hatfield
intervened.
Ellison Hatfield was bigger
and stronger than Tolbert.
More importantly, he was
Anderson Hatfield's brother.
KING:
Here you have Tolbert staring
down Devil Anse's brother,
with everybody circled up there
watching to see
what's going to happen.
And because of
the family enmity,
this took on a larger life.
WALLER:
Tolbert McCoy saw
in Ellison Hatfield
all the things that
he would like to be:
Ellison had land, Ellison was
an extremely respected member
of the community.
Put that together
with Tolbert's humiliation
by Devil Anse
not too long before,
and you can see
that rage emerging
in a very deadly way.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
After being confronted
by Ellison Hatfield,
Tolbert McCoy attacked him
with a knife.
Though unarmed,
Hatfield fought back.
♪♪
Two of Tolbert's brothers
joined in,
stabbing Ellison 27 times.
Then, as he picked up a rock
to hit Tolbert in the head
(gun fires, shot echoes)
one of the McCoy brothers shot
Ellison in the back,
severely wounding him.
The McCoy brothers were
quickly apprehended,
and two Kentucky constables
were assigned
to take them to the jail
in the county seat of Pikeville
the next morning.
WALLER:
Although Devil Anse wasn't there
that day,
he was soon informed.
The problem for him was
that this had happened on the
Kentucky side of the river,
and if the McCoy boys were taken
to Pikeville for trial
Which was not even considered
part of the Tug Valley,
and it was the Kentucky side
I think Devil Anse felt that
they probably would not be
found guilty.
NARRATOR:
Hatfield organized
an armed posse
and started in pursuit.
McCOY:
Devil Anse had his own band
of 20-plus men
that worked the timber
around his home place,
and that became a militia
pretty quickly.
Loyalty was everything
to the mountain folks,
and they prided themselves
on that.
WALLER:
Devil Anse's timber crew came
to be seen as his family.
The fact that they came
to his support so quickly
and without question
tells us a lot
about what they thought of him.
(insects chirping)
NARRATOR:
The posse seized
the three McCoys,
brought them to West Virginia,
and locked them up
in an abandoned schoolhouse.
Hatfield warned his captives
that if Ellison died,
so would they.
(thunder rumbling, rain pouring)
♪♪
That night, in the pouring rain,
Sally McCoy,
the three boys' mother,
crossed the rain-swollen
Tug Fork
to plead for mercy for her boys.
McCOY:
Sally was a strong woman.
She went right
into the den of the devil,
and she begged
for her sons' lives.
She wanted justice to take place
in a Pike County court,
and it didn't go down that way.
(thunder rumbling)
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Ellison died two days later.
Under the cover of darkness,
Hatfield and his posse marched
the McCoy brothers
to the Kentucky side
of the river.
They blindfolded them
and tied them to some pawpaw
bushes on the riverbank.
Then, they opened fire.
(guns firing)
(gunfire continues)
RICHARDSON:
You could hear the shots ring
throughout the mountains.
(guns firing)
It was a death knell.
(gun fires, echoes)
NARRATOR:
"We found my three brothers
tied together,"
remembered McCoy's eldest son.
"My little brother was
on his knees,
the top of his head shot off."
♪♪
(rain pattering, dripping)
WALLER:
Randall McCoy tried
to raise a posse
to get revenge on the Hatfields,
but his wife Sally said,
"Let it go.
It'll just make things
much worse."
RICHARDSON:
I think a lot of people saw
the killing of those three boys
as pretty much an eye
for an eye.
You don't see a lot of upheaval
and-and people coming
to the defense of the McCoys
at that time.
So it was either they
didn't want to get involved
or they saw it as justified.
(rain pattering)
NARRATOR:
In one of the first news reports
of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict,
the "New York Times" described
"a bloody affray" in Pike County
as a part of a list of other
crimes from around the nation.
RICHARDSON:
When the Hatfield-McCoy conflict
is going on,
there are very similar conflicts
out West
The O.K. Corral, Jesse James,
those sort of things.
And America romanticizes,
even at the time,
the things that are going on
in the West.
This eastern conflict
that's so similar,
it becomes
a very pejorative thing.
America looks down on it.
NARRATOR:
"More bloodshed is expected,"
the "New York Times" article
concluded,
"as the members of the families
are numerous and vindictive."
(machinery clanking)
STOLL:
Economic growth is not something
that serves the needs
or the interests of everybody,
but it's presented to us
in a universal way.
It's about greater consumption.
It's about turning nature
into wealth.
It's about a notion of progress
that comes from the spread
of capitalism.
(train whistle blowing)
NARRATOR:
In 1884, two years after the
murder of the McCoy brothers,
the Norfolk and Western made
its first shipment of coal
from southern West Virginia.
But Frederick Kimball,
now president of the railroad,
had bigger plans.
He soon announced the building
of an extension line
west to the Ohio River.
The route was still
to be determined,
but it was headed
toward the Tug Valley.
Outside investors began
to clamor for titles
to land in the area.
Their agents swarmed
into the backcountry,
buying property for as little
as a dollar an acre.
In Kentucky,
Pike County native John Mayo
recognized the wealth lying
just under the surface
of the mountain farms
where he grew up.
A former schoolteacher,
he traveled hundreds of miles
across the region
to persuade families to sell him
the mineral rights
to the land.
♪♪
Mayo used a deceptively simple
legal construct,
called a broad-form deed,
that granted rights
to natural resources
in, on, and under the land.
♪♪
STOLL:
The way that mountain households
understood this offer
was that they had won
a great victory.
They were going to be paid
something
for the coal
underneath their feet,
and they were going to be able
to remain there
and live as they saw fit.
What they did not understand
was what it would mean
to extract that coal,
because in the fine print
of these contracts,
it said that the coal companies
could do anything necessary
in order to extract it.
They could build roads,
they could cut down the trees,
and they, in fact, could come
right up to the cabin.
♪♪
(loud thumping)
NARRATOR:
Land prices
in the Tug Valley soared
in anticipation of the railroad,
and large corporations began
vying for property.
The increased competition
undercut Hatfield's
timber business.
WALLER:
The merchants in Logan County,
who had been so willing
to fund Devil Anse's
timbering operations
when it benefited them,
now begin to see it as a problem
as they were trying to attract
larger companies
from outside the area.
So they took him to court
to collect
what Devil Anse owed them.
And it really bit
into Devil Anse's business.
NARRATOR:
As Hatfield faced
increased financial pressure,
an old nemesis sought to take
advantage of his situation.
It had been nearly 15 years
since Perry Cline lost his land
to Anderson Hatfield.
Cline had moved out of
the Tug Valley to Pikeville,
where he started
several businesses
and served as deputy sheriff
before becoming an attorney.
Cline, who had been a member of
the Kentucky state legislature,
was now part of the inner circle
of Pike County's local elite.
HUTTON:
Perry Cline is what
one might call a middleman.
He knows the terrain,
he knows who can be convinced,
he knows who cannot be,
and he's the one
who seems to have
a certain sense
of what's going to happen
in the near future.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
Someone like Cline
must have had a hunch
that the most likely place
for the Norfolk and Western
to run its line was along
the Tug Fork in West Virginia
The very land that Hatfield had
taken from him a decade before.
But Cline had more than
just land issues with Hatfield.
His sister had married
Randolph McCoy's brother,
the Union soldier believed
to have been killed
by Hatfield's guerrilla group,
and Cline had become close
to the McCoy family.
KING:
Randall McCoy turns
to Perry Cline,
who has political clout
and-and the capability
to get the-the wheels
of justice turning.
Now Perry Cline is going
to become the leader
in the confrontation
with the Hatfields.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
In late November 1886,
after four years
of relative calm,
violence between the Hatfields
and McCoys resurfaced
when 22-year-old Cap Hatfield,
one of Anderson's sons,
stirred things up.
"Cap is simply a bad young man,"
a reporter later wrote.
Even Cap's uncle singled him out
as being "trouble"
from the start.
(wind blowing)
After a violent altercation,
Cap allegedly shot and killed
Randolph McCoy's nephew
as he was attempting
to escape to Kentucky
by swimming across the Tug Fork.
(gun fires repeatedly)
KING:
Randall McCoy has lost
another relation.
He turns to Perry Cline,
and Cline is looking for
an opportunity to get revenge.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Instead of issuing an arrest
warrant for the recent killing,
Cline revived the
five-year-old case
against Anderson Hatfield
and his posse
for the murder of
the three McCoy brothers.
But Cline needed authority
to pursue the Hatfields
across state lines.
He turned to Kentucky's
newly elected governor,
Simon Bolivar Buckner.
Not long before
Buckner's election,
a geological survey had
identified
an enormous amount of coal
in eastern Kentucky.
This mountainous
and remote region,
which largely had been ignored
by state politicians,
was now seen
as vitally important.
HUTTON:
Simon Buckner sees a future
that's going to be based
on steel and coal
and steam power,
and the story he's trying to
tell is that eastern Kentucky
is a place that is primitive
and in need of help.
The best way
of bringing about that help
is bringing a more vigorous,
capitalist, industrial economy
to the area.
That's Buckner's main goal.
(birds chirping)
NARRATOR:
Within days
of Buckner's inauguration,
Cline met with the governor.
He pressed him to actively
prosecute the case
against the Hatfields
and to increase the reward
for their capture to $500 each.
♪♪
WALLER:
At this time,
there were other Kentucky feuds
that had hit the newspapers,
and eastern Kentucky was getting
this reputation
for being this violent place,
and that might discourage
outside companies
from coming in.
Cline went to
the governor of Kentucky
and said, "Look,
we can't attract industry
"unless we get rid
of these terrible marauders,
the Hatfields."
NARRATOR:
Buckner agreed,
and four days later
he sent an extradition request
to the governor of West Virginia
to hand over Hatfield
and his posse
to face charges in Kentucky.
♪♪
When news spread of the call
for extraditing the Hatfields,
Logan County residents lobbied
on their behalf.
One praised the Hatfields
as "the very best
and law-abiding citizens
of that county."
After several weeks
of deliberation,
West Virginia's governor denied
Buckner's request.
♪♪
A frustrated Perry Cline,
without legal authority,
sent a special deputy
into West Virginia
to capture the Hatfields.
Frank Phillips,
known as "Bad Frank,"
was aggressive and relentless.
Phillips started mounting raids
across the Tug.
He soon arrested two
of Hatfield's associates
and brought them
across the river
to the Pikeville jail.
RICHARDSON:
Kentucky, through
Bad Frank Phillips,
had basically said,
"Tough, we're not going
to adhere to the law.
We're going to do what it takes
to bring you to justice."
And that was a game-changer
for the Hatfields.
WALLER:
It's not really sanctioned
by the state
Although I'm sure
Devil Anse saw it that way.
Here was the State of Kentucky
after them,
and I think this
really scared them.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
On the night
of New Year's Day 1888,
a nearly full moon illuminated
the fresh snow
blanketing the ridges and
hollows of the Tug Fork Valley.
The events of that evening
would mark a turning point
in tensions
between the families.
♪♪
At the McCoy home,
Randolph, his wife,
and several of their children
and grandchildren
had gone to bed.
♪♪
Suddenly,
their watchdog started barking.
(dog barking)
A voice yelled out
for McCoy to give himself up.
A group of armed men,
led by Cap Hatfield,
had surrounded the house.
WALLER:
It's Devil Anse's sons
and some of his
more aggressive crew members
who get together
I'm pretty sure without
Devil Anse's knowledge
And decide, "All right, we need
to do something about this."
KING:
The Hatfields realize
that pressure is building
against them,
and they decide that
if they can take Randall McCoy
out of the equation,
that will somehow end the feud,
and there won't be any reason
to come after them anymore.
(guns firing, echoing,
bullets hitting wood)
NARRATOR:
Gunshots ripped into the cabin.
Randolph started firing back.
(gun firing repeatedly)
(gunshots echoing)
Then, the attackers set
the McCoy cabin on fire.
(flames crackling)
Randolph's son and daughter
were shot down
as they ran to escape
the flames.
His wife, Sally, was struck
unconscious with a rifle butt.
Randolph managed to escape.
(whistling)
The Hatfield party withdrew as
the house burned to the ground.
"We have made a bad job of it,"
one said.
"There will be trouble
over this."
♪♪
McCoy returned to find two of
his children dead in the snow
and his wife critically injured.
KING:
This is a catastrophic,
violent event
beyond anything
he's seen before.
This was ratcheting up the feud
to a whole 'nother level
of brutality, of violence,
of meanness.
McCOY:
I think that in a lot of ways
the Hatfields were condemned
at that moment.
They were condemned
to the brutality
and the savageness
that would live on
through that one event.
♪♪
(gun fires, carriage rumbling)
NARRATOR:
Over the next few weeks,
Frank Phillips conducted
over a half-dozen more raids
into West Virginia.
(guns firing)
He killed one of
Hatfield's most trusted allies
and captured six more men
on the wanted list.
(guns firing)
♪♪
The "New York Times" called the
feud "A War of Extermination."
The governors of West Virginia
and Kentucky,
stirred up by the press frenzy,
put their state militias
on high alert.
♪♪
Anderson Hatfield,
in addition to worrying about
the safety of his family,
was fighting
for his financial survival.
He owed hundreds of dollars,
payable immediately,
on old debt cases
that had been rushed to trial.
WALLER:
Devil Anse was really forced
into selling his land,
which he did for very little,
especially compared
to what it would become
in just a few years
when the railroad came through
and the coal mines came in,
which is really what Perry Cline
and his allies in Pikeville
had been hoping for all along.
NARRATOR:
Just four weeks after
the New Year's Day raid,
Hatfield sold his lands
by the Tug River
to a coal agent who also agreed
to pay off his debts.
Like many of his neighbors,
Hatfield had lost his land
to outside capitalists.
♪♪
WALLER:
It seemed to symbolize
a conflict
between folks trying
to preserve local autonomy
and power and control
versus the power of the state
and the power of the modernizers
and the industrialists
to come in and take control.
The big capitalists destroy
the little ones.
And I think this is what was
happening to Devil Anse.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Hatfield moved higher up
in the mountains,
to land he purchased 20 miles
north of the Kentucky border
in Logan County.
He built a sturdy,
windowless fort near his cabin
and posted armed men
at each corner of the property.
(wind blowing)
(birds chirping, water flowing)
In the late summer of 1888,
six months after
selling his land,
Hatfield received word that
a reporter from New York City
wanted to interview him.
For journalist T.C. Crawford
of the "New York World,"
an audience
with the infamous feudist
would be a major scoop.
"No one had seen or described
Anse Hatfield, his fort,
and his guard of armed men,"
Crawford noted.
They were "the talk and terror
of the country."
HUTTON:
Crawford is practically the
first northeastern reporter
to get firsthand knowledge
of what's going on
in the Tug River Valley.
The story he ends up telling is
as much fancy as it is fact,
and that's not necessarily
because he was a bad reporter.
T.C. Crawford is typical
of a journalist working
in what's going to very soon be
called yellow journalism.
The important thing wasn't
so much to get the facts right
as it was to tell an elaborate,
entertaining story.
NARRATOR:
The first of three articles
appeared
on Sunday, October 7, 1888.
"I have been away in Murderland
for nearly ten days,"
Crawford wrote.
"No one would believe that
there is in this country
such a barbarous, uncivilized,
and wholly savage region."
The series continued
for three consecutive Sundays,
reaching hundreds of thousands
of readers.
The "Cincinnati Enquirer"
picked it up
and took the story national,
calling Hatfield
the "outlaw king"
and giving him equal billing
with Jack the Ripper.
RICHARDSON:
The Hatfield-McCoy feud was
a media sensation.
Everyday people would pick up
the newspaper
wanting to read about
what was going on
in this little part of America.
It is a story of violence
and it's a story of retribution.
But also I think
it's a story of passion.
I think people can identify
with that.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Crawford soon published
the series
in "An American Vendetta,"
the first book to tell the tale
of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
♪♪
HARKINS:
I think the politics of the word
"feud" are quite important.
It reinforces the notions
of violence,
of a certain irrationality.
Oftentimes
these feuds get framed
as having no real reason
to exist
other than a sort of
innate violence
and temperament of the people.
STOLL:
It was a disaster
for mountain people to be turned
into this kind of lurid,
violent literature
in which there was
no social content whatsoever
or attention paid
to their motives.
They became two-dimensional
and entirely the victims
of the journalists
and the perceptions
of the readers,
which were that
these people were savages,
that they were living
in the past,
backward, incapable
of historical progress.
♪♪
HUTTON:
It's a sort of propaganda,
in a way.
It's a justification
for what's about to happen,
because of capitalists
who are making their way
into the interior
of eastern Kentucky
and southern West Virginia.
It's not necessarily
a conspiracy
between the newspapers
and the railroads
and the coal companies,
but there is
a symbiotic relationship
between the press
and big business.
And the story that people like
Crawford are trying to tell
is that these are people
who need to be fixed.
NARRATOR:
"This country
is wonderfully rich,"
Crawford proclaimed
to the world.
"And needs only a railroad
to come up through it
to drive out this outlaw class."
♪♪
(hammering, metallic clinking)
By 1890, Norfolk and Western
construction crews
were laying track
for their new extension line
to the Ohio River.
As predicted, it ran
right through the bottomland
along the Tug Fork
in West Virginia,
cutting through
Hatfield's former land.
♪♪
(train rumbling)
Soon, massive timbering
operations
would turn the mountains
into an alien landscape,
and company-owned coal camps
would spread
along the creek bottoms
and hillsides
where there once had been farms.
♪♪
Notices in a local paper
warned people not to trespass
on recently acquired lands,
including over 1,300 acres
on the Tug River
purchased from
Anderson Hatfield.
♪♪
KEENEY:
In the span of one generation,
families went from being able to
roam anywhere they wanted to go,
owning their own homes,
having their own land,
to living on
someone else's land,
living in a company house,
not being able to go
wherever they wanted to go.
It's not just that
industrialization
and the way in which
they took the land
stripped people
of their way of life,
it also in some ways
stripped them
of their identity.
It's a complete loss of control
over your own destiny.
♪♪
STOLL:
There is an explicit part of the
urban narrative for the feud,
which says that industrial
extraction is, in fact,
bringing them
into the civilized world.
It's not ruining
an older way of life;
it's replacing it with
something which they badly need.
The feud itself becomes evidence
that the extractive economy
moving into the mountains
is doing them all a great favor.
♪♪
(train chugging)
NARRATOR:
As industry invaded
the Tug Valley,
Hatfields, McCoys,
and other mountain families
either found ways to adapt
to the new economic
and social order
or chose to move
out of Appalachia altogether,
seeking factory jobs in cities
or opportunities out West.
♪♪
Randolph McCoy lived out his
remaining years in Pikeville,
where he operated a ferry.
The trauma of the feud
haunted him,
and he told his story
to whomever would listen.
He died at the age of 88
in 1914.
♪♪
Seven years later,
thousands of people attended
Anderson Hatfield's funeral.
By this time, many members
of the Hatfield family,
there mourning his death,
had reinvented themselves.
They had successfully
become part
of the area's growing
middle class
as coal company employees,
politicians, and lawyers.
♪♪
To celebrate the memory
of their patriarch,
the family later erected
a life-size marble statue
over Anderson Hatfield's grave.
McCOY:
A lot of people viewed us
as uneducated people, savages,
and that really has never been
the case at all.
People can call us
whatever they want,
but we've always been
very proud people,
very proud of our heritage,
and very proud
of our home place.
♪♪
NARRATOR:
Sparked in large part by reports
of the Hatfield-McCoy feud,
the image of the hillbilly
would permeate
American popular culture.
♪♪
KEENEY:
The Hatfield and McCoy feud
created the idea of
this violent, backward,
inbred type of culture
that supposedly existed in
this isolated pocket of America.
♪♪
RICHARDSON:
A lot of people ask me,
"Who are the winners and
who are the losers in the feud?"
In the long term, the people of
Appalachia have been the losers,
because the negative opinions
that the feud created
is something that we live with
even today.
♪♪
STOLL:
The feud feeds into the notion
of people who are
unredeemable
♪♪
And that the poverty
in Appalachia
is often not explained
as the outcome of
industrial development itself.
Their poverty is thrown back
at them
as their own fault.
And I do think that
that was absolutely implicit
and even explicit
in the way in which
the feud has come down to us.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪