According to the June 15 edition of Entertainment Weekly Magazine last week’s History Channel’s six-hour miniseries Hatfields and McCoys became the highest rated basic cable entertainment program ever. We Americans love a good fight – especially one that goes on and on and on.
This show brought back some memories for me since we lived in Appalachia some thirty-five years ago near the very area where all the feudin’, fussin’, and fightin’ took place. Actually, I even wrote some articles about the feud when I had a weekly history column for the Sentinel Echo Newspaper in London, KY called Patterns of the Past.
So I dug out my dusty scrap book and reread them, then watched the History Channel documentary that preceded the miniseries. I like to get the facts before I watch a movie and see how they distort them. Plus, I was curious to compare the documentary with what my research revealed thirty-five years ago when I had to actually read books to get the information instead of surf the net.
I was happy that my research revealed much of what was covered in the documentary and the movie did not disappoint. Of course, some creative license is always taken to tell a good story. Just ask any man how big the fish was that got away.
However, the movie did its best to include the main points of the feud even if they were a bit jumbled: the Civil War, a stolen pig, land and timber rights, an out of wedlock pregnancy, the McCoy boys stabbing a Hatfield 26 times before shooting him, the Hatfields retaliating with an execution of the perpetrators, bounties put on the Hatfields heads, burning down the McCoy’s house on New Year’s Day, neighbors taking sides, Kentucky and West Virginia disputing, Supreme Court involvement, a trial, hanging the one who shouldn’t have died – just your everyday murder and mayhem – except in a mountainous terrain.
Now these were not vicious outlaws. There were no “good guys” and “bad guys.” Believe it or not, these were hospitable and friendly people. They tried to use the law and courts at the time to settle disputes. What they lacked in book learning they made up for with horse sense. They ran successful businesses. And although historians make it clear that no one knows how the feud actually started, obviously seeds of discord were gradually planted. One thing led to another and before long it was all out of control. Emotions, imputed motives, and grudges escalated into anger, rage, and revenge.
And here’s my point – it can happen to anyone. Perhaps not to the same extent of the Hatfields and McCoys because they were in a secluded environment with a distorted concept of family loyalty during a time when guns were a part of everyday life, but how many of us jump to conclusions, hop on bandwagons, make snap decisions, and take sides without having all the facts – then justify our actions?
It’s so much easier to retaliate than “love our enemies” when they are accusing us falsely, “settle with an adversary quickly” when we think we are in the right, and going the “extra mile” when we didn’t even want to go the first mile. (Matthew 5) These are not easy things to do. And frankly I wonder if anyone can do them without God leading them to do so.
Yet if we ever wonder what happens when we don’t inculcate these biblical principles into our lives, just think of the Hatfields and McCoys. When we let circumstances spiral out of control there are no winners – only losers. Even the Hatfields and McCoys finally realized this. That’s why in Pikeville, KY on June 14, 2003, after 125 years of feuding sixty descendants of the original clans signed a document declaring an official end to the hatred and bloodshed.
The treaty reads: “We do hereby and formally declare an official end to all hostilities, implied, inferred, and real, between the families, now and forevermore. We ask by God’s grace and love that we be forever remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form a family of freedom in America.”
Signing this paper is a symbolic gesture, but a step in the right direction. However, the real change happens when we internalize what Jesus taught and let it be manifest in our actions. Only then will the feudin’, fussin’, and fightin’ stop.
