Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody GroundMutzenberg, Charles Gustavus
History
Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground
Mutzenberg, Charles Gustavus
Crime -- Kentucky; Vendetta -- Kentucky
Hurley, strange to say, was liberated. Wallace escaped, but in the
following spring was captured by two of Jeff McCoy's brothers, Dud and
Jake, and delivered to the jailer of Pike. Before trial he broke jail
and returned to Cap Hatfield, who supplied him liberally with money and
a mount to aid his escape.
For some time thereafter all trace of him was lost. At last he was
heard of in Virginia. Unwilling to turn his hands to honest labor, he
had engaged in the illicit sale of whiskey. For this he was arrested
and fined. In this wise his name became public and in the course of
time his whereabouts became known back in Kentucky. Jeff McCoy's
brothers offered a reward for his capture and two men started upon the
trail of the much desired fugitive. Within a short time they returned
to Kentucky and claimed the reward. Where was the prisoner? The answer
was given by the exhibition of a bloody lock of hair--the reward was
paid.
Came the year 1887. Still not one of the twenty-three murderers of
the three McCoy brothers had been apprehended, although they were
frequently seen on the Kentucky side. Attempts to take them had been
made from time to time, but the officers always found them in such
numbers and so perfectly armed that an attempt to force their arrest
would have resulted in much bloodshed without accomplishing the arrest.
Then Governor Proctor Knott of Kentucky took a hand and offered
tempting rewards. His successor, General Simon Bolivar Buckner, renewed
them, and issued requisitions for the twenty-three murderers upon the
governor of West Virginia, appointing as agent one Frank Phillips to
receive the prisoners.
Weeks passed and no attempt was made on the part of the West Virginia
officers to execute the warrants for these men so badly wanted in
Kentucky, and, to the utter surprise and indignation of Governor
Buckner, the West Virginia Executive, Governor Wilson, refused to
honor the requisitions, assigning various reasons and excuses for his
non-action.
Governor Buckner, the old "warhorse," as his friends and
comrades-in-arms in the Civil War affectionately dubbed him, took the
West Virginia governor to task for his lack of coöperation in the
apprehension of the murderers. An exceedingly salty correspondence
followed. The controversy grew so bitter that, for a time, a
declaration of war between the two States would have surprised no
one. And while the governors fought each other on paper, the murder
mill ground on uninterrupted, the bloody warfare continued without
molestation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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