Summary of Part One:
Since the turbulent times of Civil War along the Border States, there had been hard feelings, punctuated by acts of murderous violence, between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky. The former, under the leadership of the powerful William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield, seemed by far the stronger and more financially stable, benefiting from Anse’s canny business sense and political contacts within his home state. For his part, Randolph “Old Ran’l” McCoy had always struggled to support his large family on land that was unyielding and unforgiving.
At one time, the clans had seemed compatible. Members of the two families intermarried, shared friendships, and often worked together. Devil Anse himself employed several McCoys as laborers in his timbering operation. Beginning during the Civil War, the series of events that led to the savage taking of lives reflected a set of unwritten laws and traditions that left little room for the proverbial turning of the other cheek. In 1887, when Old Ran’l found himself outmaneuvered by Devil Anse, he turned to his in-law, politically connected and vengeance-minded lawyer Perry Cline, for help.
This was precisely the opportunity the ambitious Cline had been looking for, ever since Devil Anse had finessed him out of some 5,000 acres of prime timber property. Further adding to Cline’s thirst for payback, Anse’s son, Cap, was directly responsible for the shooting death of Cline’s nephew, Jeff McCoy.
1887: Cline Ups the Ante
Perry Cline’s first order of business was to have Kentucky reinstate the five-year-old murder indictments and arrest warrants against Devil Anse and several of his friends and relatives for the execution-style killings of three of Ran’l’s sons. Aware that Anse’s West Virginia political connections were certain to fight extradition, he announced significant Kentucky state bounties on the Hatfields and hired “detectives”—glorified bounty hunters—to ford the Tug River and bring them back to Kentucky by force.
Tom Wallace, Cap Hatfield’s accomplice in killing Jeff McCoy, was among the first to experience Cline’s wrath. Bud and Jake McCoy, Jeff’s brothers, captured Wallace and conveyed him to the Pikeville jail. He escaped and was working a moonshine still when two of Cline’s bounty hunters came upon him. This time, all that was returned to Pike County for the reward was Wallace’s scalp.
Meanwhile, Cline was using his considerable political influence and connections to see Kentucky gubernatorial candidate and former Confederate Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner elected. He managed to deliver a large portion of the state’s votes; when Buckner won the election, he followed Cline’s advice and put Franklin Phillips in charge of the campaign to arrest and return the Hatfields to Pike County.
It was an ominous choice. Phillips called himself “Bad Frank,” and few who knew him would have questioned the moniker. He was a career troublemaker and lawbreaker, currently serving in the unlikely post of deputy sheriff of Pike County, Kentucky. Phillips had been indicted for crimes in three states, walking free only through the influence of his foster father, Col. John Dils, the most powerful political figure in Pike County. Oral tradition has him riding with Frank and Jesse James in his youth, pointing to the fact that he named one of his sons Jesse James Phillips.
Approachable when sober, Phillips reportedly could become instantly homicidal when in his cups—which occurred with greater frequency as time passed. He was, in the words of one chronicler, “a flamboyant egotist, mean on drink and full of his own self-importance.” He had acquired thousands of valuable acres on both sides of the Tug and was relatively well-to-do. Yet, despite being financially comfortable, Frank had developed a reputation over time as a hired gun—and he was apparently well-suited to it. As historian Dean King wrote, “Despite some obvious flaws, Bad Frank was driven, single-minded, and fearless.” He was precisely the type of man Perry Cline was seeking to lead the incursions into West Virginia in search of Hatfields.
Perry Cline was demonstrating to Devil Anse in the most effective way possible that times had changed; the Hatfields were now facing the very real possibility of a legal reckoning. In response, a letter arrived on Cline’s desk reading, in part, “We … do notify you that if you come into this country to take or bother any of the Hatfields, we will follow you to hell or take your hide … If you don’t keep your hands off our men, there is not a one of you will be left in six months.”
Cline was undeterred—as was Bad Frank when he received a like warning. With the Pike County election of 1887 imminent, according to King, “The Hatfields … sent word to [Phillips] to stay away or, failing that, to come unarmed and without warrants. Otherwise, they warned, they would kill him.” Unfazed by the death threat, Frank Phillips advised the Hatfields in return that he would indeed attend the election, with warrants in hand. Should any Hatfields show up, he “would either capture or kill them.”
The Campaign Against the Hatfields
Meanwhile, an exchange was taking place at a much higher level. Newly elected Gov. Buckner wrote to West Virginia Gov. Willis Wilson, requesting that he arrest the Hatfields under Kentucky indictment and turn them over to him for trial. Wilson refused. Further assisting the Hatfields’ case was John B. Floyd, the state senator whom Anse had helped to elect. After several back-and-forth communications, the result was a stalemate.
Frustrated with the political war of words, Perry Cline sent Frank Phillips across the Tug River to bring in the Hatfields and their indicted accomplices. Over the next several months, he would repeatedly cross the Tug into West Virginia, sometimes with the proper extradition papers, sometimes not, with posses that varied in number from two to 40 men. Meanwhile, the Pike County sheriff fired Phillips, ostensibly for putting too much energy into capturing Hatfields and not enough into his deputy’s responsibilities. Nonetheless, Bad Frank continued in his dogged pursuit with increasingly successful results.
Cline and Phillips had succeeded in getting Devil Anse’s attention. The patriarch was now fully aware that the combination of the law and a group of determined bounty men posed a real threat to his family and supporters. It was at this point that the Hatfields perpetrated the most heinous act of the decades-long conflict: Someone—tradition has it that the author of the plan was Anse’s younger brother, Elias (ironically known as “Good ’Lias”)—determined that, in order for the family’s legal woes to disappear, Old Ran’l McCoy and his family had to die.
The Raid
In the light of a full moon on a brutally cold Jan. 1, 1888, a party of nine or so Hatfield men, reportedly emboldened by drink and under the command of Devil Anse’s uncle, “Crazy Jim” Vance, dismounted and crept up to the clearing in which sat Ran’l’s dogtrot home—two cabins joined by a covered walkway. Inside the main cabin were Ran’l; his wife, Sally; their 25-year-old son, Cal; and a small grandson. In the smaller structure—the kitchen—slept three of McCoy’s daughters and his 5-year-old granddaughter. The oldest daughter was 29-year-old Alifair.
Earlier, word of the Hatfields’ plans had been leaked to the McCoys, but inexplicably, Ran’l had done nothing either to spirit his family to safety or to prepare for the attack. And now, it began. At around 10:30 p.m., Vance ordered the McCoys to come out; when they refused, the attackers opened fire and battered open the front door of the kitchen. They then set fire to the main cabin.
The McCoys returned fire, Ran’l at one point shooting the fingers off one of the torchbearers. But they were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. When Alifair appeared in the kitchen doorway, Cap Hatfield took deliberate aim and fatally shot her in the chest.* Cal McCoy managed to wound one of his attackers before breaking for the surrounding woods, but a rifle ball to the head ended his flight. As Sally attempted to run to her stricken daughter, a blow from Vance’s rifle butt broke two of her ribs. Still, she was trying to crawl to Alifair, when a crazed Johnse Hatfield brought his pistol down, fracturing her skull.
Meanwhile, the flames were swiftly engulfing the main house. When they ran out of water, the desperate McCoys poured buttermilk on the flames, but their efforts were futile. Finally, they ran from the house, Ran’l still in his nightshirt and wielding a double-barreled shotgun. He managed to wound two more of the attackers before running into the woods and out of danger. Miraculously, the other children survived, stunned but unhurt.
The members of the Hatfield party made their way back to their mounts and rode off into the night, having failed in their attempt on Ran’l’s life. Across the nation, newspapers railed against the actions of what Louisville’s Courier-Journal referred to as a “murderous gang.” The repercussions of this night’s action would haunt the Hatfields for years to come and cement in the minds of the reading public the image of the backwoodsman as a mindless barbarian.
The Battle of Grapevine Creek
Rewards soon were posted for the capture of those responsible for what was now being referred to as the New Year’s Day Massacre. Of more immediate concern to the Hatfields, however, was the increased activity of Bad Frank Phillips and his cohorts.
Even as Kentucky Gov. Buckner was again requesting from his counterpart, West Virginia’s Gov. Wilson, that the parties indicted for the earlier killings of the three McCoy brothers be surrendered forthwith, Phillips was continuing what one chronicler described as his “lightning raids” into Hatfield territory. “If the governor of West Virginia is determined to continue the protection of his murderous pets,” he self-righteously declared, “I will protect the citizens of Kentucky or die in the attempt.” Within days of the two young McCoys’ burial, and in the unshakeable conviction that he was the arbiter of the moral right, Phillips raised a 24-man posse that, according to oral tradition, included an understandably vengeful Ran’l McCoy.
Over the days that followed, the posse—acting on Phillips’ orders—seized anyone, including women and children, who might warn the Hatfields of their approach. Meanwhile, the fugitive Hatfield raiding party had spent several days hiding in the woods, receiving aid from relatives and neighbors. Eventually, Cap Hatfield, Jim Vance and his wife left the group and set off on their own, only to run directly into Bad Frank’s posse.
Vance decided to stay and fight but insisted that Cap try to escape. After a brief exchange of gunfire with Phillips and his men, Cap broke for freedom, leaving Vance to stand alone against more than 20 men. Things could end only one way. Finally, a bullet from Phillips’ powerful,
.45-90 Winchester took off the top of Vance’s head. Meanwhile, Cap borrowed a horse from a local farmer and rode directly to Devil Anse’s cabin to sound the alarm.
Anse, along with a handful of friends and relatives, rode to Vance’s rescue, only to find his body lying where it fell. Meanwhile, Phillips continued his hunt for Hatfields, cornering six fugitives, including another of Anse’s brothers, and returning them to the Pike County jail. For the time being, the news publications generally favored Phillips and his men, painting them as righteous instruments of the law.
With popular opinion behind him, Phillips mounted yet another raid, this time crossing the Tug at the head of a 33-man posse. They rode straight to Cap Hatfield’s home on Grapevine Creek, where Devil Anse, Cap and nine other armed men waited. Among them were two state-sponsored lawmen. Gov. Wilson had issued arrest warrants on Phillips and his posse for Jim Vance’s death, and he had sent a constable and a special deputy to serve them.
Gunfire broke out and lasted for some two hours. The Hatfields were outnumbered by more than three to one, and once again, the outcome was predictable. Four of their party were wounded, including the special deputy, Bill Dempsey, who suffered a shattered leg. All but Dempsey fled into the woods, leaving the deputy at the mercy of the posse.
The badly bleeding Dempsey, who had had no part in the feud, told Phillips that he was unarmed and dying, and begged him not to shoot anymore. Nonetheless, Phillips, ignoring the protests of some posse members, drew his pistol and literally blew the lawman’s head off.
Suddenly, the wind of popular opinion shifted. As both sides placed hurry-up orders for more guns, the formerly pro-McCoy newspaper editors now condemned the cold-blooded actions of Phillips and his manhunters. No one on either side, it seemed, was to be perceived as a “good guy”; to the rest of the nation, both families had displayed a savagery utterly foreign to the tenets of a modern, civilized society. The feud itself was far from over and would take a few unexpected twists and turns before the guns were stilled.
Coming in Part III
Although the so-called Battle of Grapevine Creek represented the last full-blown shooting confrontation between the two sides, it certainly did nothing to put an end to either the bitter feelings or the violence. As Bad Frank Phillips continued his relentless hunt for the indicted Hatfields, the law stepped in to bring a reckoning to the years-old killings of the three McCoy brothers. Now, with his own brother and an uncle dead and another sibling behind bars, Devil Anse Hatfield was forced to take stock of what the feud had cost—and was yet promising to cost—him and his extended family. For his part, Ran’l McCoy had lost five children before their time and would soon lose another. Finally, in one dramatic act, the courts took a drastic step to ensure that the war between the Hatfields and the McCoys was over. The question was, would it work?
*Although Alifair clearly identified Cap as her slayer before she died, blame later fell on young Ellison “Cotton Top” Mount, the mentally challenged, illegitimate son of Devil Anse’s late brother, Ellison. And there, in the eyes of the law, the blame would remain.
Part III of “Blood for Blood: The Hatfield-McCoy Feud” will appear in the August issue.