It would be erroneous to conclude that the history of Kentucky’s famous, or notorious feuds is completed here. The material at hand has, unfortunately, not been exhausted by any means.

While the Hatfields and McCoys fought to the death in Pike County, Kentucky, and along the borders of West Virginia, a bloody drama was being enacted in Rowan County. While the French-Eversole war raged in Perry County, many other counties suffered similarly during identically the same period. The eighties were a decade of blood, for during those years Harlan was in the clutches of murderers and anarchy reigned supreme. Letcher, Bell and Knott passed through like bloody experiences. In Clay County feudal wars raged for years and never disappeared completely until the close of the last century. The list of counties drenched with the blood of their citizens might yet be extended. To describe all the feuds in detail would, however, prove repetitive, even monotonous, and be only cumulative. To lengthen the list of assassinations could serve no beneficent purpose.

Some years ago we published an edition of Kentucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies. We closed the volume in the belief that feuds had ended once and for all times. But the worst period in all the bloody history of Breathitt was since then.

At the time of the publication of the first edition (from which some writers have quoted freely without giving us credit), we were charged with defaming the State, although it was admitted that the truth had been faithfully portrayed. It was not our intention then to malign the State, nor is it now.

We have simply compiled from facts a history of past events. Of what use is any history but to record past events that future generations might take lessons therefrom and be guided thereby?

Ignorance of true conditions does not, and never did bring about correction of evils.

The crusade against commercialized vice, the liquor traffic and other body and soul destroying evils can succeed only through full and complete publicity.

This history furnishes a study for the psychologist as well as for the criminologist. We cannot study crime and its manifold phases or point out remedies by studying the lives of saints. To find the original causes of social and political diseases we must go where these have existed or still exist. It would be silly to attempt to prove the result of the drink habit by the lives of teetotalers.

There are those who would be overcautious, who believe in the policy enunciated by the proverb: “Never mention a rope in the home of a man that has been hanged.” Had this principle at all times been adhered to, reforms would have been few. People will not rise to battle against evils until they are first made acquainted with the fact that the evils exist. It was due to the publicity given by the newspapers of conditions in Breathitt County that a thorough clean-up was inaugurated there.

If it be proper and right to publish nothing of a criminal or degrading nature, then we must of necessity put the ban upon the Bible.

What was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ but a bloody tragedy. The Bible gives us a detailed account of the awful, cruel, lawless conspiracy to do murder upon an innocent being. Judas prepared the ambush, as it were. He had the decency to go and hang himself, although he had nothing to fear from the authorities who had hired him to betray the Master.

The story of David and Absalom is the bloody history of a family feud on a large scale.

The murder of Abel by his brother Cain is taught the children at Sunday school, not for the purpose of entertaining them with bloodshed, or to encourage them to go and do likewise, but to make crime odious.

The history of the Moabites and other races and tribes is one long chapter of outrages. Crimes of unnamable character are recited at length in the Holy Book.

The history of the reformation is one of blood and crime. To exclude secular or sacred history because they narrate crimes and bloodshed and horrors, would mean the withdrawal of the greatest weapons with which modern progress fights its battles in shaping the minds of men.

We may gain invaluable lessons from this history if it be read with that intention. It is an appeal to people everywhere to be true to their citizenship. That Kentucky has furnished suitable material with which to illustrate and demonstrate the results of a weak, unpatriotic, disloyal citizenship, is not the fault of the historian. The facts were at hand, they were apt, and were used.

Just now there is a nation-wide appeal made for a true Americanism. The fact that the appeal is being made, seems to us an acknowledgment that true Americanism has deteriorated and needs ingrafting anew.

We join in this appeal, and shall add that had true Americanism prevailed in the feud-cursed sections of Kentucky, this bloody history could never have been written—there would have been a total absence of material for one.

What is true Americanism? It is not place of birth. It is nothing more, but nothing less, than undivided loyalty to country.

What is loyalty? When is a citizen loyal to his country? Waving his country’s flag and cheering it on a Fourth of July is but an outward demonstration of loyalty. A citizen is never loyal until he becomes and is faithful to the law; when he upholds and assists others in upholding the lawful authorities unswervingly. That is loyalty. There is no other definition for the word. So the citizen who refuses to obey the law himself in the first place, and makes no efforts to assist others in its enforcement, is not loyal to his country. When he has ceased to be loyal he becomes disloyal, and disloyalty is treason.

The true American, therefore, is loyal and has the courage to prove that loyalty whenever occasion arises.

One need not put on a uniform and fight battles against a foreign enemy to prove his patriotism. The patriot—the truly loyal citizen serves his country well by exercising that loyalty at home.

Good citizenship carries with it more than the simple right to vote. That right has obligations attached to it. The chief obligation is loyalty.

The moment loyalty weakens, a wedge of social and political corruption enters; once that wedge is driven deeper government must totter and fall, and anarchy steps in its place.

During the Civil War hundreds of thousands of Americans gave up their lives “that the nation might live.” The nation is an aggregation of States, the State a union of communities, and communities are formed by families.

To preserve a nation healthy that it may live, the States must also be so. But a State cannot be so if portions of it are diseased with social and political corruption. When a sore spot appears it ought to be cauterized at once without waiting for it to develop into an eating, destroying cancer.

The spirit of loyalty must be revived and kept alive in the minds and hearts of all citizens. Only through it can the evil impulses of the criminally inclined be controlled.

The citizen who is loyal should always reflect, when he begins to lose courage, that the good citizens are in the majority, and that the vicious element is almost universally cowardly. The criminal has the fear of the law although he defies it for a time.

We have narrated at great length the stealthy preparations made by the murderers of Callahan. The cool and apparently deliberate manner with which their plans were executed would lead one to believe that they feared no law.

Yet we have seen how a moment after the crime had been committed and its perpetrators realized that they were murderers in fact, they “stampeded,” the proof shows; they trembled with fear, though no one was on their tracks then. Their hearts turned to water. What did they fear? Punishment.

The bloody dictators of Breathitt County had abrogated the law, as they believed, yet feared the law they pretended to despise. This is clearly established by the methods with which they killed off their enemies. They resorted to secret assassination in each case because it would make discovery and punishment difficult, if not impossible. Each assassination had been shrewdly and carefully planned. Notwithstanding their temporary power and supremacy they lived in constant fear and dread, believing that punishment would and must sooner or later overtake them. This belief was strengthened by the fate of other criminals elsewhere.

If, then, the criminal fears the arm of the law, it requires very simple reasoning to come to the conclusion that the criminally inclined can, by the sure guaranty of swift, condign punishment be intimidated and forced into abstaining from following that inclination, and be so put in fear that he will think twice before he gives his atavistic tendencies free rein.

This history was written to teach a moral. The remedies suggested here for lawlessness and contempt for the law, may be applied with equal benefit where mob spirit is rampant. The mobist, to coin a phrase, that starts out to do murder upon a defenceless prisoner, is on a par with the bushwhacker—even inferior to him in courage. For mobs are courageous only through mass numbers; or when under strong and aggressive leadership. Mobs have been known to slink away ignominiously when confronted by one or two loyal citizens.

Disloyalty has been at the bottom of all great social disturbances.

Let the spirit of true Americanism, which is loyalty to country, return and with it will come the courage to uphold the law at whatever cost. Then and not till then is our flag the true symbol of American liberty; then and not till then will the phrase “American citizen” cease to be a banality, as it now is with many, and become what it is intended to be, a badge of honor, the most precious a man can wear on this earth.

[1] Collin’s “History of Kentucky.”