Post-war Economics and
Politics
Fightin’, Feudin’, Speculatin’
•Mid-19th century America was a highly stratified
society, and Appalachia was no exception.
•Billings and Blee point out that “In 1860, the
top 5% of households owned one-third of all
wealth in [Clay Co. KY], with the top 10%
owning 48%…” (244)
•What is most important is what the few with
wealth did with that wealth.
“Although a small elite in Clay County held
a vastly disproportionate amount of personal
wealth and land, they did not invest these
resources in the diversified industries or local
infrastructure that might generate sustained
economic development. Rather, some
invested their fortunes outside the county, in
areas such as the Bluegrass. Others used
their fortunes to leverage lucrative financial
arrangements with outside resource
extractive industries intent on plundering the
riches of Clay County.” (245)
•After the Civil War, westward expansion,
railroad development in the west, and
mechanization of agriculture created
competition with Appalachian farmers.
•Once the “meat locker”, if not the breadbasket
of the nation, Appalachia loses its competitive
advantage.
•This leads to out migration, and a surprising
consequence.
“The outmigration of propertyless and
economically marginal farm families meant that
as generations succeeded each other in the
rural neighborhoods of Beech Creek, greater
parity of land ownership was achieved, leading
later ethnographers to misperceive rural
Appalachia as a region of longstanding
egalitarianism.” (Billings & Blee, 247)
Feuds
•Clan violence and moonshining are cornerstones
of the Appalachian stereotype.
•The Hatfield McCoy feud is the most
mythologized. Historian Altina Waller, in Feud:
Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in
Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Univ. of NC Press, 1988),
has provided the best study of what may have
really happened.
•The feud takes place in the Tug Valley, along the
Kentucky West Virginia boarder.
•The most important figure is William Anderson
“Devil Anse” Hatfield of West Virginia.
•Across the Tug Fork, in Kentucky, live Randolph
“Old Ranel” McCoy and his wise, “Aunt Sally.”
Devil Anse Hatfield
Devil Anse, ca. 1910
Randolph McCoy
•One legend has it that the feud began over a
pig.
•Another legend has it that it began when Devil
Anse’s womanizing son, Johnse, captured the
heart of Old Ranel and Aunt Sally’s beautiful
daughter, Roseanna.
•Neither explanation survives Waller’s account.
Roseanna McCoy
Uncle Dyke Garrett, who baptized Devil
Anse at age 73, in 1911.
•Anse Hatfield headed the “Logan Raiders,” a
Confederate band of guerillas, during the Civil
War.
•For reasons that Waller cannot clearly identify,
his father left him landless.
•Hatfield, drawing upon his leadership skills,
perhaps his ability to intimidate, and some
considerable legal maneuvering built a
timbering business.
•Specifically, Hatfield won in a lawsuit 5,000
acres of timberland from one Perry Cline.
•Cline, orphaned before the Civil War, chose
John Dils of Pike Co. as guardian.
•Dils was a Unionist, imprisoned by the
Confederates, who later formed his own
regiment.
•Dils was also a Pikeville businessman and an
evangelical Christian.
•With his connections in Pike Co. Cline
becomes a successful politician and lawyer.
•As economic promoter and defender of law
and order, Cline positions himself to get
revenge on Anse Hatfield.
•At its height, the feud becomes a battle
between a county seat elite (Pikeville) and the
Tug Valley.
•In eventual defeat, Anse Hatfield sells his
property to a coal speculator.
•The Hatfield McCoy feud was neither so deadly
nor did it last as long as the Garrard White feud
of Clay Co. KY.
•It had its beginnings in the 1840’s and lasted
past the turn of the century.
•The most violent years were the 1890’s when
land prices were driven up by speculation.
•Like the Hatfield McCoy feud, the driving
force was not the ignorant, isolated
mountaineer, but town dwelling, politically
connected, financially ambitious elites.
•And like the Tug Valley feud, political division
grounded in the Civil War preceded the
violence. The Garrards were Democrats with
statewide connections. The Whites,
Republican, dominated local elections.
•The dependency of other families on the
patronage of Garrards or Whites was both
older and stronger in Clay Co. than in
Pike/Logan.
•The split was so bad that on several
occasions KY governors were advised to split
the county up.
•Shortage of land was a major factor in both
feuds.
•The inordinate power of the sheriff’s office
was a factor in both feuds, as it will also be in
the Harlan Co. mine wars. Kentucky sheriffs
are law enforcement officers with significant
patronage power. They are also tax collectors
and conduct land sales for tax defaults.
•Billings and Blee (p. 304ff.) identify several
institutional legacies of the Clay Co. feud.
•A lack of governmental autonomy from
the factions of the elite.
•A vulnerability to corruption.
•Ever increasing patronage.
•Use of government office for private gain.
•The subordination of economic
development to political interests.
•Another, opportunistic, outcome of the feuds
was the stereotyping of the mountaineer as
resistant to progress, and in need of the
leadership of the outside investor and
developer.
Speculation
•William Mahone of the Richmond Whig and
Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal
are only two of the “New South boosters” who
called for the industrial development of the
mountainous regions of their states.
•Gov. John Debar of WVA produced thousands of
pieces of promotional literature advertising the
state.
•WVA, KY, TN, NC, VA and GA all established
immigration boards to recruit people into the
states.
•The British firm, Southern States Coal,
Iron and Land Company, bought Bald
Mountain in TN, and then sold the 25,000
acres to Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad.
(Davis, 153)
•Alexander A. Arthur acquired 80,000 acres
around Yellow Creek and brought in over
$20 million in British capital to develop
Middlesboro KY. (Gaventa, 53-55)
•In 1874 British industrialist James Bowron
purchased 150,000 acres in Tennessee to
develop iron production. (Davis, 163-4)
•“By 1894, La Societé Anonyme du Centre des
Appalaches (Kentucky, U.S.A.), a Belgian
corporation, had acquired 72,000 acres in Clay
and other southeastern Kentucky counties,
secured with a mortgage of $160,000.
•Confederate General John Daniel Imboden, in
1880, bought 47,000 acres of mineral land in
Wise Co, and 1/6 interest in another 100,000
acres.*
•While serving as Lee’s topographical engineer in
1861, Major Jedidiah Hotchkiss observed large
outcroppings of coal along the eastern base of
Flat Top Mountain. Two decade later he finally
interested the financial backers of the N & W
Railroad in the field.
*This and the following is detailed in Eller, Chapter 2.
•In Pike and Letcher Counties KY, Richard M.
Broas of NY purchased or leased thousands of
acres which eventually were sold to
Consolidation Coal Co.
•SW VA native Rufus A. Ayers organized the
Appalachia Steel and Iron Co. at BSG, helped
organize the Virginia, Tennessee and Carolina
Steel and Iron Co., controlled thousands of
acres in Wise, Dickenson, Tazewell and
Buchanan Counties, and was extensively
involved in railroads.
•George L. Carter of Hillsville VA started in
iron production. He organized the Tom’s Creek
Coal Co., consolidated holdings into the Carter
Coal and Iron Co., and after acquiring 300,000
acres in Dickenson, Russell and Wise
Counties, created the Clinchfield Coal Co.
•John C. Calhoun Mayo, born in Pike Co. and
raised in Paintsville KY, was that state’s most
industrious and successful speculator. In 1886
he was teaching school in Pike and Johnson
Counties, but would spend weekends riding
through the Big Sandy valley.
•He would buy options on mineral lands for
50 cents to a dollar an acre. He would then
sell the lands for as much as $16 an acre.
•Like Broas before him, Mayo made extensive
use of the broad form deed.
•The Broad form deed severed mineral rights
from the surface rights, and conferred upon
the mineral owner the right to obtain the
minerals in whatever means necessary.
•“By 1907, he controlled or owned outright
700,000 acres of mountain land, held principal
interest in several banks and coal companies in
Kentucky and southwest Virginia, and was a
chief stockholder in Consolidation Coal… At the
time of his death, Mayo’s fortune was reported
to be worth over twenty million dollars.” (Eller,
63)
•Helping fuel the speculation in Appalachian
resources, and finance the construction of
railroads to haul those resources from the
mountains, was an influx of foreign capital.
•Rapid development in the U.S. created
higher interest rates on investment here than
could be had in Europe. This caused a pulling
of capital from Europe.
•Industrial development in Europe, especially
in England, had reached a level of maturity
that demanded less capital.
•Coupled with a high level of savings, that
caused a “push” effect.
•“During the period 1865-1914, 34 per cent of
the total new overseas portfolio capital issued
in Britain went to North America…”*
*M. Edelstein, “Foreign investment and empire, 1860-1914,” in The
Economic History of Britain Since 1700, v. 2. 1860 to the 1970s.
Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, eds. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981.
•“… the flow of British funds to the US was
dominated by the push of domestic British
forces. This domination was stronger in the
early years of the 1870-1913 period than it
was towards the end. A relative dearth of both
domestic and other overseas portfolio assets
with the high return/medium risk
characteristics of US assets and a heightened
desire for relatively risky portfolio assets as
British national wealth increased seem to have
been the most important reasons for the early
domination of push forces.” ibid
•So, by the last quarter of the 19th century,
Appalachia was deeply involved in what
today we call a globalized economy.