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Kentucky's
Famous Feuds |
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Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies is available from your local bookstore or from on-line vendors such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
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The citizens of
Kentucky did much to substantiate the state’s bloody reputation, judging from accounts of the region’s violent feuds reported in the nation’s newspapers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The
New York Times of July 26, 1885 reported, “The savages who inhabit this region are not manly enough to fight fairly, face to face. They lie in wait and shoot their enemies in the back.…One can hardly believe that any part of the United States is cursed with people so lawless and degraded.”
Both newspaper reporters and novelists of the era eagerly embraced the stereotype of the violent, bearded Anglo-Saxon / Scotch-Irish mountaineer, with his jug of moonshine, trusty Winchester, and beautiful daughters. Books such as John Fox, Jr.’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1906) and A Cumberland Vendetta (1911) and D.W. Griffith’s silent film “A Feud in the Kentucky Hills” (1912) served to reinforce the popular stereotype. Author Charles Mutzenberg knew many of the participants in the feuds and discussed the events of the strife with them. He was one of the first writers to eschew stereotypes and sensationalism and make an attempt at critical and accurate reporting of the events as they occurred in the region where he lived and worked. |
