Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) [Paperback]

Altina L. Waller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1988 | ISBN-10: 0807842168 | ISBN-13: 978-0807842164 | Edition: 1st

The Hatfield-McCoy feud, the entertaining subject of comic strips, popular songs, movies, and television, has long been a part of American folklore and legend. Ironically, the extraordinary endurance of the myth that has grown up around the Hatfields and McCoys has obscured the consideration of the feud as a serious historical event. In this study, Altina Waller tells the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys and the Tug Valley of West Virginia and Kentucky, placing the feud in the context of community and regional change in the era of industrialization.

Waller argues that the legendary feud was not an outgrowth of an inherently violent mountain culture but rather one manifestation of a contest for social and economic control between local people and outside industrial capitalists—the Hatfields were defending community autonomy while the McCoys were allied with the forces of industrial capitalism. Profiling the colorful feudists "Devil Anse" Hatfield, "Old Ranel" McCoy, "Bad" Frank Phillips, and the ill-fated lovers Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield, Waller illustrates how Appalachians both shaped and responded to the new economic and social order.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The now legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud has served as America's answer to Romeo and Juliet for over a century. In this insightful work, Waller, a history professor at SUNY-Plattsburgh, debunks assumptions that a blighted romance or strong family ties were central to the hostilities. She convincingly argues that the feud operated on several levels: as a clash between an emerging national industrial culture, whose proponents, for reasons of self-aggrandizement, allied themselves with the McCoys, and the autonomous and local mountain culture that the Hatfields embodied; between the south and the north; and between the states of Kentucky and West Virginia. In the process, Waller demonstrates how and why Hatfield-McCoy myths arose and how stereotypes of the feud "consigned the mountaineers to the unreal world of savagery . . . and industrialization . . . could proceed much more smoothly." Demographic data unfold dramatically, and, utilizing eclectic sources, she illuminates both the era and the complex cast of characters involved in the 12-year feud (her portrait of leader "Devil Anse" Hatfield is particularly sensitive). A pictorial essay adds another dimension to an already rich piece of scholarship. While Waller's study is invaluable for Americanists, she has written an engaging work that, quite simply, is an enjoyable read.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this revisionist study, Waller establishes the familiar social morphology of post-Civil War Appalachia, a traditional precapitalist world on the threshold of penetration by Eastern mining, railroad, and timber companies. Chronicling a far more intricate picture of social change than previous studies, she describes the clash of religion, politics, family, community, and frontier law against which the bloody, 12-year feud was played out. Her observations are fresh and often demythologizing: the law-abiding character of the mountaineers, their predestinarian religion, the impact of national forces on a cohesive, autonomous preindustrial society. The work of an enlightened and skeptical intelligence. Milton Cantor, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1st edition (June 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807842168
• ISBN-13: 978-0807842164
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-researched and written account of the famous feud along, May 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) (Paperback)

Waller has a done a spectacular job of recreating this now infamous event, seperating fact from myth and rebutting many of the stereotypes that were perpetrated about the feud by the Northern press that glamorized it. As a native of Pike County, Kentucky and a distant relative of many involved in this feud, I found the text most informative. It is also accesible to anyone who is not from Appalachia or who is not versed in its history.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hatfields and McCoys, July 21, 2002

By 

J. Seth Witmer (Rock Island, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) (Paperback)

It has long been assumed that the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys in the 1880's was a family affair between two clans of primitive hillbillies. In Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900, Altina Waller argues that this view is nothing less than folklore, and the historical reality of the feud has been all but lost. Her work successfully explodes the myths that have surrounded the feuding Hatfields and McCoys.

In her introduction, Professor Waller discusses the previous interpretations of the feud. The first states that, "the feud and the culture from which it emerged were anachronisms in modern society" and "they represented a primitive way of life which had somehow been preserved in much the same way that prehistoric fossils are preserved." The second school of thought suggests that the feud was a result of the transformation that was occurring in the region due to the "onslaught of industrialization." Waller rejects both of these interpretations because of three aspects of the feud that she has identified as violence, family, and timing. Waller has concluded after much research that "in the 1870s and 1880s, the Tug Valley may have been boisterous and rowdy, but it was far from dangerous" and that "something unusual was happening eithin this particular community which drove a few individuals and families to resort to extreme measures." And Waller discounts the family explanation because " supportersof the Hatfields and of the Mccoys consisted of numerous individuals unrelated to those families; in fact, more than half of each group were unrelated to the feud leaders. More puzzling, there were McCoys on the Hatfield side and Hatfields on the McCoy side." Waller rejects also that the feud was caused by the Civil War. She dates the feud from 1878-1900, and identifies two phases with a five year interim. Waller offers that the feud must be examined internally and also in the light of regional and national trends.

The Tug Valley in the years following the Civil War underwent profound changes. Due to rapid growth in population and the finite agricultural resources available in the Valley, a sort of greedy desperation began to emerge in the character of some inhabitants of the Tug Valley. Also at this time outside interest in the vast resources of the Appalachias was taking the form of big money men and local agents purchasing huge tracts of land in order to exploit the mountains for their coal and timber. Gradually the mountaineer was transformed from an inependent farmer to an impoverished wage laborer. attempting to buck this trend is none other than Devil Anse Hatfield. Through hard work and some crafty legal maneuvers, Anse becomes proprieter of a sizable timber busines. And in the process incurs the wrath of Old Ranel McCoy and Perry Cline. Old Ranel through his own foolishness has not prospered, and Anse has bested Cline in a court action and removed him from his lands, which are then awarded to Anse. This is what Professor Waller has discovered to be the crux of the feud--economic power and control and its resultant societal implications. Anse has climbed the ladder while others have watched, and they are jealous.

These truths were initially lost because of the sensational handling of the feud by the newspapers of the day. Altina Waller has been successful in separating the myths from the reality. She states in conclusion that, "the feudists were struggling with the same historical forces of transformation that had been changing Americal since before the American Revolution." This is the larger picture.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but flawed in several important aspects . . ., September 20, 2002

By 

Robert M. Baker (London, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) (Paperback)

Dr. Waller attempts to get past the "traditional accounts", usually assembled from the newspaper and popular accounts of the time, but falls into one error which confounds the rest of her presentation: she found a great deal of information for the Hatfield family and for the West Virginia side of the river, but not as much for the Kentucky side and she generalized about the second using what she learned from the first. While the book was exceptionally well-researched, some information was overlooked or missed. Professor Waller unfortunately accepts the claim that the Tug Valley was a Confederate stronghold. However, only the West Virginia side of the river was strongly Confederate in its sympathies. The Kentucky side of the river contained a large number of Union veterans (possibly as many as a hundred or more men from this area joined the Federal army), and, in fact, in Pike County the area bordering the river was the most loyal in the entire county (post-war voting records reveal the largest percentages of Republican voters in the two precincts which were part of the Tug Valley). Waller's initial conclusions lead her to dismiss the Civil War connections of the feud. She was apparently unaware of the high degree of Unionism in the region and how it may have contributed to what could have been a continuation of the 1861-1865 warfare on the border, despite the alleged thirteen- and five-year respites. While it is well-known that Hatfield and his kin were Confederate veterans (though there is a justifiable dispute as to whether Devil Anse was actually a member of the Logan Wildcats), and it is also known that many of the McCoys had served in gray with the Hatfields, in the later phases of the feud (aptly identified by Dr. Waller) the participation of several former Union veterans or their sons in the fighting against the Hatfields indicates a significant Civil War connection. The evidence that the feuding was a carryover from the war is substantial and cannot be dismissed.