The story of the Hatfields and McCoys, as presented in books newspapers and cinema is largely fiction. It is legends and lies and not history, consisting of a few historical events inside several layers of tall tales and fables reported by the yellow journalists of the late nineteenth century. Almost all the actual events occurred in Pike County, Kentucky, where this author was born in 1940. The feud story came to us by way of big city newspaper reporters who visited Pikeville Kentucky shortly after the last feud violence, ...
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The story of the Hatfields and McCoys, as presented in books newspapers and cinema is largely fiction. It is legends and lies and not history, consisting of a few historical events inside several layers of tall tales and fables reported by the yellow journalists of the late nineteenth century. Almost all the actual events occurred in Pike County, Kentucky, where this author was born in 1940. The feud story came to us by way of big city newspaper reporters who visited Pikeville Kentucky shortly after the last feud violence, in 1888. With a plethora of fictional additions by various writers, the story remained much as it was in 1888, until this book! 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 a gang organized by the same men who gave the reporters the story. 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 2012 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, is descended from both the Hatfields and McCoys. Having heard the events described by eyewitnesses while growing up on Blackberry Creek, and, having spent over two thousand hours in the courthouses and archives, Mr. Dotson corrects the record--using the records.
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