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

• Author: Eubanks, Georgann

Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 18601900. Altina L. Waller University of North Carolina Press. $32.50. It began with the charge of a stolen hog and caused a dozen deaths in as many years. The conflict between the Kentucky McCoys and the West Virginia Hatfields ended almost a century ago, but the names have survived, mythically miscast in folk song, comic strip, and the affected gait of Walter Brennan. But Waller says the feud's more serious and degrading imageAppalachian lawlessness, vigilantism, and ruthless violence-was largely the product of nineteenth-cenwry media hype. In her remarkably detailed analysis, Waller explains what legend does not: namely, that both Hatfields and McCoys devotedly sought legal redress, ultimately through the Supreme Court of the United States. But justice was never done.

Waller explains how passions were actually intensified by the intrusion of the state. The Hatfields and McCoys were tangled by marriage and many other common interests, not unlike the Montagues and the Capulets. They were separated only by the Tug river, which happened to serve as the state line, further complicating the legal logistics. When news of the feud began to circulate, the governor of Kentucky worried that the coal- and timber-rich mountains of his state would soon be seen as unsafe by outside investors. He sent an extradition request to the governor of West Virginia for the...