For a century we read in books and newspapers and saw on screen, the legend of what is the most famous feud in American history: the Hatfields and the McCoys. What we had was legend, and not history, because the story consisted of a few historical events inside several layers of tall tales and fables reported by the yellow journalists of the late nineteenth century. Except for the raids into West Virginia by Frank Phillips' posse in 1887-8, all the documented events connected to the feud occurred in Pike County, Kentucky. The feud story, like the Phillips posse, was largely made in Pikeville, in 1888. The Pikeville stories were manufactured by men who had two primary goals: 1) They wanted to see a story published which would facilitate the conviction of Wall Hatfield and the other eight members of the Hatfield faction who were in jail in Pikeville, and, 2) They wanted to justify the two cold-blooded murders that had been committed only days before the reporters arrived by the leader of their posse, Frank Phillips. Everything in the early writings of the big city reporters was given to them by men with those two interests foremost in their minds.It is impossible to overstate the importance of the fact that none of the original feud story, which forms the basis for all the succeeding iterations, was taken from the actual record. It is all hearsay, and the hearsay came from the most prejudiced sources imaginable. The Pikeville elite not only had "a dog in the fight," they had the whole damn pack in it.The same moneyed interests that owned the newspapers also wanted the vast mineral riches underlying the land occupied by the Hatfields and McCoys, and their reporters' depictions of the people of Tug Valley as immoral and violent barbarians helped to make the swindle more palatable to the public.The Hatfield and McCoy feud is probably unique among all the events in history in that writers of feud-based fiction are more constrained than are writers of feud history. The good fiction writer is always careful to avoid writing something that is patently impossible. A fiction writer would never say that twelve hundred people regularly attended a church in an isolated mountain hollow that had only two dozen members. A "True Story" of the feud, can say that and still have reviewers from prestigious media organs laud its factual accuracy.As fiction can be made just as exciting as the screenwriter or author desires, the 2012 TV epic, "Hatfields & McCoys," and the recent fictional 'history'' books are great entertainment, but they are not history.Some of the books that followed the Kevin Costner movie contain an even greater ratio of fable to facts than did the movie. With a rare combination of facts and humor, this author calls them all to task.Tom E. Dotson, holder of a Cornell masters degree in labor history, and descended from both the Hatfields and McCoys, asks the question: "When only five Hatfields (along with three McCoys) were among the twenty men indicted for the vigilante slaying of the three McCoys in 1882, and only nine of the forty who rode with the Phillips posse in 1887-8 were McCoys, why is it called 'The Hatfield and McCoy feud'?" With solid research and a unique insight, Dotson answers that question.

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.

There have been several versions written of this widely known altercation between the two prominent mountain families. but no two of them have coincided as to the facts concerning a feud which has become nationally and even internationally known throughout the years, since these two clans stalked each other in the wilderness recesses of Tug River, along the borders of West Virginia and Kentucky which were at that time very sparsely settled. It has been commonly rumored that the feud actually started because of a dispute between the two clans over the ownership of a hog. This, however, is not true. It is true that there had been some trouble in this respect prior to the actual beginning of the feud, but a more or less satisfactory settlement had been made concerning the hog. In those days there were vast uninhabited tracts of land in this section of West Virginia and Kentucky covered by dense forest which afforded an unsurmountable amount of mast upon which the hogs of various settlers would feast during that particular season of the year. Each settler would have a certain mark by which his hogs could be recognized from those of his neighbors. These marks would be cut in the ears of the hogs by their owners with the keen-bladed knife of the frontiersman by cutting what was known as the swallow-fork in the left ear; an upper-cut in the right ear, or perhaps an underbit in one ear and some other mark in the other ear and each settler would have a different mark. When the acorns and other nuts from the native trees in the forest began to drop in the fall of the year, the settlers would drive their hogs into these woodland areas and leave them for weeks and months so that they might grow and fatten on the nuts, and when the time came to round up the hogs each settler would know his hogs by these markings.

The gripping new history of the most famous blood feud in American history, by the bestselling author of Skeletons on the Zahara. For more than a century, the enduring feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has been American shorthand for passionate, unyielding, and even violent confrontation. Yet despite numerous articles, books, television shows, and feature films, nobody has ever told the in-depth true story of this legendarily fierce-and far-reaching-clash in the heart of Appalachia. Drawing upon years of original research, including the discovery of previously lost and ignored documents and interviews with relatives of both families, bestselling author Dean King finally gives us the full, unvarnished tale, one vastly more enthralling than the myth. Unlike previous accounts, King's begins in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Hatfields and McCoys lived side-by-side in relative harmony. Theirs was a hardscrabble life of farming and hunting, timbering and moonshining-and raising large and boisterous families-in the rugged hollows and hills of Virginia and Kentucky. Cut off from much of the outside world, these descendants of Scots-Irish and English pioneers spoke a language many Americans would find hard to understand. Yet contrary to popular belief, the Hatfields and McCoys were established and influential landowners who had intermarried and worked together for decades. When the Civil War came, and the outside world crashed into their lives, family members were forced to choose sides. After the war, the lines that had been drawn remained-and the violence not only lived on but became personal. By the time the fury finally subsided, a dozen family members would be in the grave. The hostilities grew to be a national spectacle, and the cycle of killing, kidnapping, stalking by bounty hunters, and skirmishing between governors spawned a legal battle that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and still influences us today. Filled with bitter quarrels, reckless affairs, treacherous betrayals, relentless mercenaries, and courageous detectives, THE FEUD is the riveting story of two frontier families struggling for survival within the narrow confines of an unforgiving land. It is a formative American tale, and in it, we see the reflection of our own family bonds and the lengths to which we might go in order to defend our honor, our loyalties, and our livelihood.