142. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 25, 1874; NYT, September 28, 1874.

143. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 6.

144. KTY, September 22, 1874.

145. Louisville Commercial, September 26, 1874. For the Commercial's role as one of Kentucky's only Republican newspapers in the 1870s, see Summers, The Press Gang, Newspapers and Politics, 209.

146. In July 1874 Jeremiah (or Jerry) Little engaged in a street fight with James Cockrell, Hiram Jett, and John Jett. Though Little reportedly killed John and seriously wounded Hiram, he too was wounded, and that fall (after regular courts had resumed following William Strong's capture of the courthouse), Little sued Hiram Jett for $2,000 in damages for shooting him, leaving the former "incapable of hard labor." The jury awarded him $280. Newspapers identified Little as the aggressor and reported the affray as part of a "family feud" without exploring its origins any further. Jeremiah Little vs. Hiram Jett and James Cockerill, September 1874June, 1877, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, KDLA; Philadelphia Inquirer, July 24, 1874; New Orleans Times, July 24, 1874; HGH, February 2, 1887; Clements, History of the First Regiment of Infantry, 148; Lewis Franklin Johnson, Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials, 321; Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 355.

147. Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 352.

148. Louisville Commercial, September 26, 1874.

149. LCJ, September 28, October 6, 1874; Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 364. At times the word riot is employed but with an understanding of the limitations this term brings with it. Although it is easily defined as violent or unruly action carried out by a group of three or more individuals, this does not account for the various nuances that could distinguish a riot from a mob or any other word describing a violent concerted effort. At best, riot is "an imprecise term for describing popular actions," but it is difficult to imagine a more descriptive word in many cases. E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," 107.

150. LCJ, September 29, 1874.

151. Ibid., October 6, 1874.

152. Ibid., October 17, 1874.

153. "Fayette Hewitt to His Excellency, Hon. Jas. B. McCreary," 5.

154. Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 5054, 6873, 98.

155. LCJ, December 16, 1878.

156. As in the rest of the United States, voter turnout was particularly high in Kentucky in the race between Hayes and Tilden. In 1876 the state had the highest number of votes cast (proportional to population) for a presidential election since 1844. Breathitt County went Democratic with a 70.1 percent majority, with 72.6 percent of potential votes cast. Shannon and McQuown, Presidential Politics in Kentucky, 45, 47.

157. Altina Waller has suggested that before his election, Judge Burnett had "obvious ties" to the Bluegrass-based Kentucky Union Railroad which, as will be examined in the following chapter, began amassing land in Breathitt County starting in the 1870s. I have found no evidence of Burnett's connections to it or any other railroad and, considering that he was from Virginia rather than the Bluegrass, this is unlikely. However, Judge William Randall was a member of the railroad's board of directors when it was chartered, as were George M. Adams and Sydney Barnes. Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 36567; The Kentucky Union Railway Company, 65.

158. LCJ, December 5, January 6, 1879; Louisville Commercial, December 8, 1878.

159. Louisville Commercial, December 8, 1878; G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 177.

160. "Crystals," 5.

161. LCJ, January 16, 1879.

162. Ibid., November 30, December 1, 19, 1878, January 16, 1879; Louisville Commercial, December 8, 1878; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 2, 1878.

163. LCJ, December 1, 19, 1878; KTY, February 1, 1879.

164. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 2, 3, 1878.

165. Lexington Herald, May 11, 1897.

166. Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John Aikman, June 12, 1873, Breathitt County Circuit Court Minutes, box 4, bundle 1, Public Records Division, KDLA.

167. LCJ, November 30, 1878, January 6, 1879; Chicago Inter-Ocean, December 5, 21, 1878; Hartford Herald, December 11, 1878; "Report of Second Lieut. A. C. Speed, concerning a Detachment under his Command, from January 1, 1879, to January 24, 1879, Acting as Cavalry at Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky," in Legislative Document No. 1, 24.

168. LCJ, December 19, 26, 1878, January 6, 16, 1879; Louisville Commercial, February 1, 24, 1879; WPA, In the Land of Breathitt, 6465.

169. The Commonwealth of Kentucky against J. C. B. Allen et al., Breathitt County Circuit Court, September Special Term, 187879, Breathitt County Circuit Court Records, KDLA; LCJ, November 30, December 1, 19, 24, 1878; Chicago Inter-Ocean, December 2, 21, 1878; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 2, 3, 1878; Hartford Herald, December 11, 1878; G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 18586.

170. "Fayette Hewitt to His Excellency, Hon. Jas. B. McCreary," 5.

171. Tapp, "Three Decades of Kentucky Politics," 13435; Ramage and Watkins, Kentucky Rising, 34243.

172. Dacus, Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States, 43034; Weaver, "Louisville's Labor Disturbance," 17983; Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 31011; Steven J. Hoffman, "Looking North," 10535; Sullivan, "Louisville and Her Southern Alliance," 29095; Tapp, "Three Decades of Kentucky Politics," 15658.

173. "J. M. Wright to His Excellency Governor James B. McCreary," "Legislative Document No. 1: Adjutant General's Report, June 15, 1879," KPD, vol. 3 (Frankfort: E. H. Porter, 1879), 3; WPA, Military History of Kentucky, 257.

174. Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 9698; Sullivan, "Louisville and Her Southern Alliance," 29293.

175. Kentucky's transition from military surveillance of its hinterlands to a more urban-based military presence parallels the federal government's pivotal post-Reconstruction transition from using military coercion as a tool for solving "the southern question" to protecting northern capitalist interests through strikebreaking. Foner, Reconstruction, 58386. For New Departure Democrats, see Perman, The Road to Redemption, 5886, 14977; Prichard, "Popular Political Movements in Kentucky," 931.

176. NYT, December 2, 1878.

177. New York Herald, December 3, 1878. For Henry Clay's nickname, see Ramage and Watkins, Kentucky Rising, 18.

178. LCJ, December 3, 5, 8, 1878; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 14, 1878; "J. M. Wright to His Excellency Governor James B. McCreary," 35.

179. Hartford Herald, January 8, 1879.

180. NYT, January 31, 1879; KTY, February 1, 1879; G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 18586.

181. Johnston, "Romance and Tragedy of Kentucky Feuds," 554.

182. Louisville Commercial, February 1, 24, 1879; KTY, February 25, 27, 1879.

183. Chicago Inter-Ocean, November 26, 1879; "Report of Second Lieut. A. C. Speed, concerning a Detachment under his Command, from January 1, 1879, to January 24, 1879, Acting as Cavalry at Jackson, Breathitt County, Kentucky," in Legislative Document No. 1, 2426; G. W. Noble, Behold He Cometh in the Clouds, 186.

184. KWY, February 6, 1879.

185. E.L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:34.

186. Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky, 7273.

187. Philadelphia Inquirer, December 23, 1878.

188. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 6, 1878; LCJ, December 1, 1878. See also Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 36566.

189. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 2, 1878.

190. Cincinnati Commercial, December 1, 8, 1878; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 2, 1878; LCJ, December 3, 5, 8, 1878; NYT, December 7, 1878.

191. LCJ, December 3, 1878.

192. Ibid., December 5, 1878.

193. Ibid., December 3, 5, 1878.

194. Ibid.

195. The same article highlighted the county's poverty: "The worldly goods of these five or six thousand people do not much exceed in value those of so many Indians on a government reservation. Under such a state of life society must approximate a primitive condition, and if the Bluegrass counties are inclined to turn up their noses at it we beg them to count up their own killings and remember that none of us are any better than we ought to be. I am informed that a baker's dozen will cover the number of men killed in personal difficulties in this county since the war and many a more favored county can discount that with a single year's crop, and get ahead of Breathitt as much in 'stiffs' as they do in cereals." LCJ, December 5, 1878.

196. Ibid., December 24, 1878.

197. Ibid., January 26, 1879; NYT, January 26, 1879.

198. LCJ, January 16, 1879.

199. Ibid., December 19, 1878.

200. Ibid., January 6, 1879.

201. KTY, January 18, 1879.

202. Fellman, Inside War, 254; Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 33033.

203. Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 35356 (quote), 36466.

204. New York Herald, November 30, 1878. The Herald's assertion that the Free-mans enjoyed equality in Breathitt County was unusual in its time, but reflects larger assumptions about the mountain South's misbegotten placement in a region generally defined by a black presence. For Breathitt County to be properly depoliticized, it had to be completely dissociated from racial difference, the primary cleavage in postwar southern society that defined the region's politics. For an elaboration on Appalachian "racial innocence" in fictional contrast to "the biracial character of the rest of the South," see Inscoe, "The Racial 'Innocence' of Appalachia," 8597 (quote 89).

205. LCJ, March 26, 1879.

206. Between 1874 and 1895 the Louisville Courier-Journal, with Watterson still at the helm, identified forty-one violent conflicts as "feuds" in thirty-one different Kentucky counties throughout the state. Waller, "Feuding in Appalachia," 353, 354, 35758.

207. KTY, February 25, 27, 1879.

208. Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 499.

209. Breckinridge News, March 26, 1879; Washington Post, March 21, 1879.

210. NYT, May 27, 1879.

211. AAC (1879): 540541.

212. Washington Times, May 10, 1897.

213. JJDD, entry, April 9, 1884, reel 1, pp. 28586; Cleveland Herald, April 16, 1884; MVB, April 18, 1884; SIJ, April 18, 1884 (quote); HMC, April 25, 1884; E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 2:7177; WPA, In the Land of Breathitt, 7475. A highly erroneous account of an attack on the Breathitt County jailhouse, one that ended with a heroic jailer holding off the mob, was printed in the NYT, April 25, 1884; Baltimore Sun, April 26, 1884.

214. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries aspiring lynch mobs could not escape their own knowledge of the difference between the legitimate "ritual of the courthouse" and their own questionable legitimacy as arbiters of justice. In order that their vigilantism have at least a symbolic aura of legitimacy, the courthouse's physical structure, or the "courthouse square" common to many southern county seats, was often used as a setting for victims' hanging, immolation, or both. The larger the lynch mob, it seemed, the greater the importance that the victim's (or victims') death(s) take place in this most consecrated of centralized public spaces. Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 257 (quote); Ifill, On the Courthouse Lawn, xiiixix, 723; Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 30; Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland, 12; Piepmeier, Out in Public, 141.

215. Entry, April 9, 1884, JJDD, reel 1, p. 286. For Dickey's fears of racial equality in Kentucky's future, see Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 9293.

216. MVB, April 23, 1884.

217. Hangings in front of courthouses, bodies affixed with notes proscribing how long they were to remain on public display: Breathitt County's 1884 lynch mob followed a template that, by the 1890s, created the impression that "their members had attended formal schools on procedures." Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race, 185; Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle, 5 (quote); Apel, Imagery of Lynching, 23; Ayers, The Promise of the New South, 156; Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 78.

218. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 314.

219. MVB, April 18, 1884.

220. Brundage, Lynching in the New South; Kaufman-Osborn, "Capital Punishment as Legal Lynching?" 3233; Waldrep, "Word and Deed," 23943.

221. For the "communal" interpretation of southern lynching, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry, 145; Trudier Harris, Exorcising Blackness, 123. For empirical accounts of lynching with clear political motives, see Baker, This Mob Will Surely Take My Life.

222. Cleveland Herald, April 16, 1884; MVB, April 18, 1884. Although Kilburn's body was taken to William Strong's farm after his request, Ben Strong's uncle claimed his body before he could be transported, and Strong was apparently buried elsewhere. JJDD, entry, April 10, 1884, reel 1, pp. 28687 (quote).

223. MVB, May 29, July 10, 1884; Perrin, Battle, and Kniffin, Kentucky, 95758, 964 (quote), 973.

224. Rolff, Strong Family of Virginia and Other Southern States, 94.

225. HGH, July 7, 14, 1886; SIJ, August 24, 1886.

226. See Hahn, "Hunting, Fishing and Foraging," 5557; Hahn, A Nation under our Feet, 18598; Fitzgerald, The Union League Movement in the Deep South.

227. HMC, July 31, 1885.

4. "The civilizing and Christianizing effects of material improvement and development"

1. Bourbon News, April 28, 1882 (quote), April 3, 1883; FRA, January 6, 1883; LCJ, December 25, 1884.

2. Hickman Courier, July 16, 1880; Bourbon News, April 10, 1883; SIJ, January 15, 1884; LCJ, December 25, 1884; The Virginias 5, no. 2 (1884): 21; MVB, July 21, 1887; Allison, The City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky, 32; Warner, "Comments on Kentucky," 263; Manual of the Railroads of the United States, 670; Verhoeff, Kentucky River Navigation, 118; E. L. Noble, Bloody Breathitt, 1:41.

3. The Kentucky Union Railway Company, 45.

4. Bourbon News, March 6, April 10, 1883; LCJ, December 25, 1884; HGH, April 22, 1885.

5. LCJ, December 25, 1884.

6. As will be addressed in a later chapter, racial interpretations of feud violence abounded from the 1880s until well into the twentieth century. The widespread belief that the Kentucky mountains maintained a repository of "pure" Anglo-Saxon blood were balanced with other accounts that made mountaineers out to be purely "Celtic."

7. NYT, December 26, 1878. This article was written before the rash of violence in other parts of Kentucky, and the "best citizens" were still considered white southerners rather than innately violent "mountain whites" in the minds of the metropolitan media.

8. Hartford Herald, February 6, 1884.

9. Executive Documents of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Forty-Ninth Congress, lv, 610; Henry Weinholt to J. P. McGaughey, March 27, 1887, in General Assembly of the Knights of Labor of America, 1604.