The hatfield and mccoy feud

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The Hatfield and McCoy Feud
The feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families involves political, social, cultural and economic factors that happened between West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky in the early twentieth centuries (Otis 15). The feud highlights the weaknesses of institutions like education systems and churches, the legacy of the early civil wars, the importance of law, exaggerated family importance, and isolation of mountain folk.
The Hartfield-McCoy Feud was a prolonged conflict fought in the 1880s between neighboring families living in the Tug Valley (Otis & Rice 27). The Hatfields inhabited the Logan County which consist of the present Mingo in West Virginia. The McCoy, on the other hand, lived mainly across the Tug Fork near Pike County in Kentucky. The families were led by Anderson Devil Anse for Hatfield and Randolph for McCoy. The families were deeply rooted in the area and even intermarried among themselves as well as with other neighboring families. Among several conflicts that happened in Eastern Kentucky, Hatfield-McCoy feud was the most notorious. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the long-lasting conflict between the two families.
The explanation as to who was loyal to the family leaders Devil Anse and Randolph McCoy is based on the economic conflict caused by the opportunity to sell timber and secondly by coal and railroads. Devil Anse was the successful timber entrepreneur among the local in Tug…