The National tribune., 1906-09-27
THE PASSING OF ~cAr- HATFIELD

THI: PASSING OF "CAP" HATFIELD.
Newspaper men will all keenly la
n1ent the ending of the career of "oid
Cap. Hatfeidtg We started to write
''untimely ending" but 1t seems very
timely. Itt,woqtd have been still more
timely a dozen years ago. Newspaper
men will regret II because the BUSH
whacking old villain was 4 perennial
source of news, His wars were blood
ier than South American revolutions.
and whenever his crowd and the Nc
Coys started out cunning for one an
other there was an astonishing proper
ton OF killings to the amount Of am
munition expended. Both sides were
deadly marksmen. and cartridges came
much too high to be wasted.
The Hatfelds and their enemies the
McCoys, are illustrations of the law of
heredity and of the early English pol
icy Of dumping paupers and criminals
upon our Southern shores. For many
decades England sent shipload after
shipload of her undesirable people to
the tidewater regions Of Virginia and
the Carolinas. 1t was expected that
these would be employed by the plant
ers. Anyhow they would be gotten rid
of, and England would be far better for
their absence. The planters found the
negroes better workers in servitude than
this poor white trash.' They were
driven Off the plantations and their
places taken by slaves. What became
of them the planters neither knew nor
cared. Where In the North the same
element was carefully looked after by
the respectable people-their children
gathered into the schools. and the eld-
er ones into c1iurches-the Southerners
cared as little for them as for the "var-
mints" of the forest. Whenever they
became troublesome by stealing and
depredating, the planters would shoot,
whip or otherwise punish them, but
otherwise paid no more attention to
them and their doings than to the foxes
and raccoons. A few of the best were
employed as overseers. but otherwise
there was nothing for them to do. This
miserable element squatted wherever
:hey could find a place. bred like No--
way rats, and drifted back to the noun
tains, and thence westward. Probably
large number of the boldest and most
active fled to the mountains as refuge
from the law and the planters whom
they had offended. Settled there the
families bred and multiplied into tribes
which were constantly at war with one
another. They had no schools. very
poor apologies for churches, and fol-
young male as he attained manhood
took himself wife, squatted upon bit
of hillside, put up cabin, and
scratched over a patch of ground for
cornfeld. Besides this Gag o'corn,"
he lived on what he could kill in the
woods. Squirrels. raccoons. opossums,
rabbits, hawks pigeons eked out his
larder. What little money he needed
he obtained by ysdigging gingseng, from
raccoon, opossum. mink and weasel
skins. and ftful jobs of cutting tan bark
and hoop-poles. So they have lived,
starved, sterile, ignorant. miserable lives
for nearly two centuries. one genera
ton following another. without pro-
gress or Improvement. They are sur
prisingly little different from their an
cestors who arrived in the English
transportsWThe mighty changes which
have taken place in the rest, of the
country have affected them as little as
the rocks in their mountains. We have
heard moro of them and their savage
feuds of late years, because the railroad
and the telegraph have invaded their
mountain haunts. About the only
change civilization has brot them is to
give them Winchester rifles instead of
the fiintlocks of their forefathers. AS a
rule they are quite short-lived, not
merely because of their murderous
feuds. but more because of their ignor-
ance, their lack of sufficient proper
food, and the wretched shacks In which
they live and breed.
Even the mighty war of the rebellion
brot few changes. While the Confed-
crate conscription filed up the rebel
armies with hundreds Of thousands of
their class found in the more thickly-
settled country, they were too remote
to be reached by the "conscripter."
Their principal participation in the
war was as guerrillas or bushwhackers,
where robbery was the principal object
This "Ole Cap Hatfield" was a hu-
man wolf. Possibly his remote ances-
tor was some thug of the wretched dark
alleys of London, who robbed and muir
dered until he was caught and trans
ported. Cap was the head of a clan
of his sons and kinsmen, and has kept
up a war with the McCoys. another
breed Of the same ilk, for many years
It matters not what the original cause
of the quarrel was. any more than the
beginning Of a row between the plug
| uglies of different alleys of great city
Cap is supposed to have killed a doz-
en- men in the course of the feud, which
is rather remarkable, as the usual fate
of his class is to be soon caught by some
quicker shot on the other side.
For the last two years he has been
running a blind tiger" near Wharn-
cliff, w. Va. The immediate cause OF
his taking off was a quarrel with his
younger brother, who seems to be an
unsual Hatfield, as he has been study
ing medicine, and has graduated from