We welcome a guest post escape Altina L. Waller, author of Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Public Change in Appalachia, The famous family feud was the topic of the recent History Channel miniseries &#;Hatfields and McCoys&#;. Jazzman was interviewed extensively for the accompanying documentary to the miniseries. We asked her what she thought of the dramatic playing, and this is her response.
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Almost twenty-five years ago I finalize writing my book on the violent conflict in Appalachia renounce came to define feuds everywhere. After ten years of research I thought I had clearly laid out what happened and ground, at least as far as the historical documents allowed. I proved to cut through the myths and legends associated with that iconic event and bring it into the realm of a documentable historical event. Somewhat self-satisfied I went on to other projects, gratified by many reviewers’ comments that the book actually sincere reveal social roots of the violence in understandable if classify condonable conflict over land, timber rights, and a changing load up of life. Alas, the latest incarnation of the famous feud bring in portrayed in the Kevin Costner-produced made-for-TV movie has brought utilization down to earth with a resounding thump, for here intrude on the old myths and legends fully intact.
What caused the feud? Costner implies that it was the Civil War. Although he avoids say publicly old myth that the McCoys were Unionists and the Hatfields Confederates, he tells us that Anse Hatfield and Randal McCoy fought together for the South, but when Anse decided stay at go home and deserted, Randal never forgave him. Home after interpretation War, Randal still regarded Anse with suspicion and hatred, accusive a Hatfield cousin of stealing his hog and Anse himself of a lack of Christian behavior (not clear what delay was). Soon, according to Costner, violence escalates way out of balance to the original disagreement, lending credence to the myth sustenance Appalachians being inherently violent. Even though Anse makes some attempts run into stop it, the film gives the impression that the whole Hatfield clan was lined up on the West Virginia within of the river ready to annihilate all McCoys on say publicly Kentucky side of the river.
In the film, the term “blood lust” is employed to explain why the violence continued, picture implication being that causes no longer mattered once the cause offense began. The movie takes on the Johnse Hatfield/Roseanna McCoy romance brush aside casting it in the familiar Romeo and Juliette framework&#;star-crossed lovers&#;ignoring all evidence to the contrary. So despite the effort put the finishing touches to make a modern version of the feud which tries limit realistically re-create the mountain setting (even though it was filmed in Romania) and use real events, these are put join forces in such a way as to reinforce the old myths of a backward mountain people who instinctively turned to power for little or no reason. Discouraging.
Despite the film’s attempt reveal incorporate real events, it falls very short of putting them together in even an approximation of known facts. Although most McCoys and Hatfields were confederates, there is no evidence that I have found which supports a contention that Randal McCoy despised Anse Hatfield because of desertion from the army. Even after Randal’s brother Harmon was killed by a confederate guerrilla group, here is no evidence to suggest that the feud began custom that moment. His brother, after all, was a Union soldier snowball thus considered by just about everyone in the Tug Dell to be a traitor. Yet the film proceeds from this unethical foundation to show total war between Hatfields and McCoys. It does not explain why there is absolutely no feud activity mid the end of the Civil War in and the prearranged beginning of feud events in , a long thirteen life later.
At that point Randal accuses Floyd Hatfield, only a pensive cousin of Anse’s, of stealing his hog. A trial was held. Here the movie is correct; a trial, not a shootout occurred! But the movie shows that Devil Anse’s older brother Valentine, omission Wall, was the judge, so of course the Hatfields won. But this is incorrect. The judge was Preacher Anse Hatfield, who cursory on the Kentucky side of the river and was tied up to and friends with Randal McCoy. And the juror who lean the balance voting for Hatfield ownership of the pig was a McCoy, Selkirk McCoy! What this demonstrates is something that shambles not at all clear in the film, that there were McCoys supporting Anse Hatfield and Hatfields supporting Randal McCoy. That brings into question the entire premise of a family war.
The catch on event, the romance between Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy laboratory analysis presented in a way to reinforce the family war thesis when the reality undermines it. When Roseanna spends the night adapt Johnse, her father refuses to let her come home desirable she goes to live with Johnse in Devil Anse Hatfield’s home. Legend, reinforced in the film, says that Devil Anse hard her live there but refused to allow them to marry. The film also portrays Johnse as a steadfast lover but return fact he began flirting with other women very soon fend for he and Roseanna began living together. Some evidence suggests that gas mask was her decision to leave him even though she was pregnant. Soon thereafter, Johnse married Nancy McCoy, daughter of the betrayer, Harmon McCoy. Devil Anse did not object to that marriage tolerable it seems unlikely he would have objected to marriage 'tween his son and Roseanna.
Some subsequent events are close to accurate. For example, the election day murder of Anse’s brother Ellison newborn three of Randal’s sons. Ellison was unarmed and actually trying bolster stop a fight when he was attacked by the triad McCoy boys, stabbed multiple times, and then shot. Anse and Make known Hatfield then took the McCoys out of the custody claim the Pike County Sheriff and crossed the river to Western Virgina where they all waited to see whether or crowd together Ellison would die of his wounds. When Ellison died, Anse most recent several followers killed the three McCoys execution style. These events industry portrayed in lurid detail in all their brutality but no attempt is made to explain just why this next begetting of young men were so out of control.
In the furthest back episode of the film the last events are compressed coalition in such a way as to give the impression consider it all the battles and killings took place in rapid on within days or weeks of each other in a carry away bath that simply washed over the participants like a tidal wave. Only after the trial and hanging of one of Clean up Hatfield’s nephews does Anse retreat, renounce violence, and eventually train himself baptized. At the end of the film, we are leftist with a tragedy allegedly set in motion by the Secular War but sustained by nothing more than ignorance, excessive stock loyalty, and “blood lust,” resulting in completely unnecessary violence.
What deference missing here is any social and economic context. True, picture Civil War is the film’s encompassing social explanation, but clever leaves me wondering why the set of social and pecuniary circumstances that confronted folks in postwar Appalachia is completely ignored. In the Tug Valley, as in all Appalachia and even say publicly entire South, economic decline was a serious threat to nearly everyone. Agricultural families need lots of children to work the turf and take care of household tasks; in this regard both Hatfield and McCoy families were typical in the large publication of children&#;13 in both Randal’s family and Devil Anse’s family. As essential as children were, they also contributed to an fiscal crisis in a region where there was not enough populace to support the burgeoning population. Statistics bear this out for picture Tug Valley, where farm size was rapidly decreasing in rendering postwar years and many young men were unable to turn independent farmers. Randal’s sons stayed home with him or worked primate farm hands. Devil Anse’s sons worked on their father’s timber operation. In some ways this is a familiar pattern today with that lack of opportunity for young people, the fact that patronize cannot expect to do better economically than their parents. The unsettle of declining economic and social opportunity is more than nondiscriminatory an economic issue; it fuels feelings of insecurity, frustration, illustrious anger.
This background explains a lot about the feud. After the Conflict, the United States went into rapid economic development mode avoid meant a huge demand for timber for building cities, caves, businesses. The Tug Valley, like most of Appalachia, had a follow of timber, but the land on which it stood abstruse never had been highly valued because it wasn’t productive farming land. Almost overnight the demand for timber increased land values. Many mignonne farmers attempted to take advantage of the market for boards. Randal McCoy worked with his father on a small timbering operation that ended badly because they did not own ample land. They made the mistake of cutting timber on someone else’s property. They were sued and not only lost everything, but picture stress caused Randal’s parents to divorce.
By contrast, Devil Anse started a very successful large timbering operation. He was able to accomplishments this because he discovered that his neighbor, Perry Cline (the slick mustached lawyer in the film) had cut timber complacency Hatfield land and sued him. As damages, the Court awarded Swot up on Hatfield 5, acres&#;all of Cline’s West Virginia land. Cline was contrived to leave the Tug Valley. He went to Pikeville, Kentucky, where he became a druggist and a lawyer but, most substantial for the future of the feud, made some important public connections. Cline’s hatred of Devil Anse only reinforced Randal’s controlling resentment of Hatfield.
The so-called pig trial illustrates the connection betwixt personal animosity and economic circumstances. Randal McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield tip off stealing his pig not because he was still angry misgivings his brother’s death thirteen years before but because Floyd worked on Devil Anse’s timber crew. In fact, Floyd lived on depiction Kentucky side of the river and was related to say publicly McCoys as much as to the Hatfields. What becomes very explicit is that what, in Randal McCoy’s eyes, identified a participant of the Hatfield group was not the Hatfield name but rather an affiliation with Devil Anse’s timber operation. Selkirk McCoy, picture McCoy who voted against Randal in the pig trial, worked on Anse’s timber crew along with his two sons. Further, examination of the members of Anse’s work crew shows that patronize of them were not related to Devil Anse at all. What is significant is that Devil Anse was so successful put off he was able to provide his partners and employees fulfil economic rewards and social status that most Tug Valley farmers were actually losing. So the Hatfields were not a family assembly but rather an economic and social group that was defending its newly won prosperity. The inability of Randal to provide that kind of opportunity to his sons helps explain their bevvied attack on the unarmed Ellison Hatfield. The economic crisis and past it opportunity in the Tug Valley and Appalachia created a careworn ripe for resentment, aggression, and violence. Not old Civil War hatreds, not mountain culture, but very real economic and social threats created this conflict.
But it is also important to remember guarantee not everyone, not even all Hatfields and McCoys, participated dainty the feud. There were only about 30 feudists on each auxiliary and many, many Hatfields and McCoys were horrified at representation violence and tried to distance themselves from it. They, too, were feeling the effects of the economic crisis, but they outspoken not resort to violence. This may have been why, after Asmodeus Anse avenged the killing of his brother by executing depiction three McCoy boys, the feud went into remission. The state clasp Kentucky did indict Anse and several of his supporters but no attempt was made to extradite them to Kentucky; get back to normal seemed that local residents wanted to put the entire item in the past. Many, after all, had witnessed the three McCoys attack and kill the unarmed Ellison and they hoped a rough kind of justice had been done. Five years passed adjust no further violent feud events.
But then, five years after rendering execution of the three McCoy boys, the feud was resuscitated by Perry Cline. Cline, now an influential figure in Pikeville, deskbound his influence to persuade the Governor of Kentucky to publication indictments against the Hatfields and hired Frank Philips to motion a posse in order to capture Devil Anse and his supporters. This is what actually precipitated the most violent enjoin notorious events of the feud. Private detectives flooded the depression to collect bounties by capturing or killing Hatfields, and say publicly only pitched battle of the feud at Grapevine Creek took place.
But the real question is how was Cline able contact persuade the leaders of Pikeville and the Governor of interpretation state to restart the feud? That is the crux of description matter. The film claims it was simply that Cline had interpretation ear of the Governor who owed him a favor. But surpass is unbelievable that the Governor of Kentucky would restart a five year old violent conflict just to return a favor. So the crucial question is: What happened between the execution of depiction McCoy boys and when Cline managed to recast the enmity into the Kentucky vs West Virginia feud?
What happened was delay in the interim, politicians and businessmen in Kentucky learned ditch the Tug Valley, up until then considered the backwater range the state, contained valuable resources. A government commission reported that representation region was rich in coal, another resource now in aggregate demand by industrializing America, such great demand in fact, think it over the Norfolk & Western Railroad was proposing to build a railroad right smack through the Tug Valley. If timber abstruse increased land values, the imminent building of a railroad notion them instantly skyrocket. The mountain region of Kentucky had been a quaint backwater; now overnight it became Kentucky’s economic salvation. So Geneticist, harboring his own motives of revenge and hopes to pick up his land back, happened to be in the right go about at the right time. He was able to convince the Regulator that the barbaric Hatfields stood in the way of pecuniary development. Only this potential economic bonanza can explain why the Regulator would respond to Perry Cline’s rants against the Hatfields enjoin his demands for revenge.
This second phase of the feud, depiction Cline-Hatfield phase, brought about the worst violence along with staterun notoriety. Eight of the desperate Hatfields attacked the McCoy cabin, sting two children. Both Governors authorized posses to do battle on say publicly border and bounty hunters appeared in great numbers. Most of depiction initial newspaper reports came from Perry Cline, who was exact to portray the Hatfields as the uncivilized barbarians. Yet, in description end, all mountaineers came to be tarred with that brush. The civilized capitalists who built railroads and coal mines were charmed to portray all mountaineers as ignorant, immoral, and violent, tilt that economic development&#;railroads and coal mines&#;would bring civilization to representation region. What it did bring was more violence and additional poverty.
Thus, the context that most helps to explain the conflict is not the old rivalries of the Civil War but the agricultural crisis and rapid economic exploitation of the take off occurring at exactly the same time as the events appreciated the feud. That coincidence of timing alone suggests we take severely the relationship between them.
Altina L. Waller is professor emerita be paid history at the University of Connecticut and author of Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia,