January 7, 1865---The Hatfields and The McCoys: Of hillbillies, rednecks, and crackers

JANUARY 7, 1865:            

The famous feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys begins with the murder of Asa Harmon McCoy most likely by Captain William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield C.S.A. Hatfield, who was a West Virginia Confederate murdered the Kentuckian Asa for supporting the Union cause. Ironically, most of the McCoys were Confederate as well, and so Asa’s death was never of much concern in and of itself. However, as a matter of family honor, Randall “Ole Ran’l” McCoy and his fifteen surviving children declared war on Anse and the 16 Hatfield progeny. Internecine violence, with its reprisals and counter-reprisals, went on well into the 1890s. Even though members of the two families freely intermarried throughout the feud the Hatfields and the McCoys did not formally make peace until 2003.  

William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield (1839-1921)

The grand irony of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud is that not only did Hatfields and McCoys intermarry during the feud but that they intermarried before the feud and continue to do so today. In fact, as far as anyone knows, they were closely related even in the Old Country, and their respective ancestors chose to live in the same region of the New World because of their close bonds. 

Randall "Ole Ran'l" McCoy  (1825-1914)

The “Old Country” for the Hatfields and the McCoys was the north of Ireland. Both families are among those who were (sometimes forcibly) resettled from Scotland to Ireland in the 17^th Century in a scheme called “Plantation,” designed by the Protestant royalty of England to establish control over the Irish Province of Ulster --- once the seat of the O’Neills, the most powerful Catholic royal house in Ireland. The dispossessed Catholic Irish were exiled “to hell or Connaught,” the bleak, rocky western province of Ireland. Most American Irish Catholics are descended from the Connaught exiles. 

The shared homeland of generations of feuding Hatfields and McCoys. Today, along with Bluegrass music and locally (and legally) produced white lightning, the feud draws tens of thousands of tourists yearly.

“Plantation” gave rise to a new people, the Scots-Irish (described uncharitably as “not quite Scots, not quite Irish, and the worst of both”). Today, the Scots-Irish make up the Protestant population of Northern Ireland. They also make up the largest single ethnic group among modern Americans, including the majority of U.S. Presidents. 

Hatfields and McCoys pose with actor Kevin Costner who played Devil Anse in the TV miniseries in 2012. Both families lost at least a score of relatives during the feud.

A great many of the Scots-Irish fought on the Protestant side in Ireland’s many civil wars, and made up the majority of the foot soldiers at the Battle of the Boyne (1690) when the Protestant William of Orange defeated the Catholic James of England. Known as “King Billy’s Boys” in that engagement, the infantry wore orange neckerchiefs as part of their uniforms. The Catholics called them the “Red Necks.” Since most of them lived in rugged Ulster, they also became known as the “Hill Billys.” 

The term “Cracker” is also Gaelic in origin --- Craic (pronounced “crack”) means "talk" --- and among the Catholic Irish the Scots-Irish were mocked as bigmouths who bragged more but did less. 

All these terms --- redneck, hillbilly and cracker --- became part of the American lexicon when the Scots-Irish emigrated to America. Poorer than the English who settled the New England coasts and the Tidewater of Virginia and the Carolinas, they became America's first underclass. Many among the Scots-Irish moved into the hinterlands, mostly into the dells and hollows (“hollers”) of Appalachia where they became (as they had been in Europe) tenant farmers and unskilled laborers, an often dour, stubborn and exceptionally clannish people; they also homebrewed their own whiskey as they had in Ireland ("po't'cheen"), often at night to hide the activity from tax collectors. Illicit “moonshine” is still made today. 

Elisha Lunsford, Confederate soldier, wearing the red scarf. Lunsford was the third great-granduncle of Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II.

"Redneck Pride" is an old commodity. Although (then as now) most often meant as perjoratives, numerous Scots-Irish felt and feel no shame in being described thus. A (sometimes lowbrow) cracker subculture has evolved, which many Americans --- including many crackers --- conflate and confuse with the culture of the Old South.  

Not an uncommon article of clothing among Confederate soldiers in the 1860s, even nowadays the red scarf (often sporting a clan tartan) is a symbol of pride among many descendants of the Scots-Irish.

The region along the Kentucky-West Virginia border where the Hatfields and McCoys feuded 150 years ago is one of the most beautiful albeit the most economically depressed areas of the United States. Southeastern Kentucky, right in the heart of Hatfield-McCoy country, and the home of bluegrass music, is made up of five of the ten poorest counties in the nation. The damage wrought by the Civil War still lingers in this region. 

An abandoned farmstead in Owsley County, Kentucky, the poorest county in America, with a median income of $12,000 annually.