Waller, Feud - Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900

Abstract

As Allina Waller notes in her introduction, for most Americans the Hatfield-McCoy feud conjures up "images of bearded mountaineers brandishing rifles and jugs of moonshine as they defend illegal stills from federal 'revenuers,' enforce 'shotgun' weddings, and lawlessly perpetuate inherited family grudges." Historians have generally reinforced this view, explaining this late nineteenth-century dispute as the natural product of premodern Appalachian culture, where irrational · family loyalties, rampant lawlessness, and routine violence were the norm.

But in Feud Allina Waller brilliantly rescues the feudists and their world from popular stereotypes and historical misinterpretation. Instead of caricatures, Waller provides detailed and sympathetic treatments of protagonists such as "Old Ranel" McCoy, "Bad Frank" Phillips, and "Devil Anse" Hatfield. More than this, Waller explains the dispute. She convincingly argues that there were two distinct phases to the feud. Feud I (1878-82) was strictly a local affair. Here Waller demolishes much of the standard interpretation, making clear that: kinship was not the controlling variable, as economic ties and other factors resulted in McCoys on the Hatfield side, and vice-versa; the disputants (in keeping with their Appalachian neighbors) went to great lengths to secure legal remedies for their problems; and the violence that did occur (five killings in five years) was an aberration in Appalachian culture.