15 - Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart

Our Southern Highlanders is a captivating memoir by Horace Kephart, a Pennsylvania-born writer and librarian, who shares his profound experiences and cultural insights from his time in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Narrated by Meredith Womac Cook, this work offers a unique glimpse into a bygone era, though readers should be aware that it contains some offensive language and overt racism reflective of its time and setting.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section fifteen of Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Keppart. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The blood feud
in Corsica, when a man is wrong by another, public
sentiment requires that he redress his own grievance, and that
his family and friends shall share the consequences. Before the

(00:23):
law made us citizens, great nature made us men. When
one has an enemy, one must choose between the three
s's schia peto, stiletto strata, the rifle, the dagger or flight.
There are two presents to be made to an enemy
palaclda o pharaoh, fredo, hot shot or cold steel. The

(00:50):
Corsican code of honor does not require that vengeance be
taken in fair fight. Rather, should there be a sudden
thrust of the knife, or a pistol fired point blank
into the enemy's breast, or a rifle shot from some
ambush picked in advance. The assassin is not conscious of
any cowardice in such act. If the trouble between him

(01:12):
and his foe had been strictly a personal matter to
be settled forever by one man's fall, then he might
have welcomed a duel with all the punctilios. But his
blood is not his alone, it belongs to his clan.
Whenever a Corsican is slain, his family takes up the feud.
A vendetta ensues a war of extermination by clan against clan. Now,

(01:36):
the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is
to inflict the greatest loss upon the enemy with the
least loss to one's own side. Hence, we have hostilities
without declaration of war. We have the ambush, the night attacked,
masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus we murder hundreds of

(01:58):
sleep or unshriven. This is war. Moreover, while a soldier
must be brave in any extremity, it is no less
his duty to save himself unharmed, as long as he can,
so that he may help his own side and kill
more and more of the enemy. Therefore, it is proper
and military for him to snipe his foes by deliberate

(02:21):
sharpshooting from behind any lurking place that he can find.
This is war, and the vendetta, says our Corsican, is
nothing else than war. When Matteo has been slain by
an enemy, his friends carry his body home and swear
vengeance over the corpse, while his wife soaks her handkerchief

(02:41):
in his wounds to keep as a token, whereby she
will incite her children as they grow up, to war
against all kinsmen of their father's murderer. Then a son
or daughter of Matteo slipped forth into the night, full
armed to slay like a dog any member of the
rival fact whom he may find at a disadvantage the

(03:03):
di don he flies to the maquis, the mountain thicket,
and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off
his enemies, an outlaw with a price upon his head,
but pitied or admired by all Corsicans outside the feud,
and suckered by his clan. It is a far cry
from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia. So why this prelude.

(03:28):
Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica. Not a drop of
South European blood flows in their veins. Few of them
ever heard one word of a foreign tongue. True, and
yet we shall mark some strange analogies between Corsican vendettas
and Appalachian feuds, Corsican clannishness and Appalachian clannishness, Corsican women

(03:50):
and our Mountain women. Before this chapter ends long long ago,
in the mounds of eastern Kentucky, doctor Abner Baker married
a miss White. Daniel Bates married Baker's sister, but separated
from her. In eighteen forty four, Baker charged Bates with
undue intimacy with his wife and killed him. The Whites,

(04:13):
defending their kinswoman, prosecuted the doctor, but he was acquitted
and moved to Cuba. Afterwards, Baker returned in flat violation
of the Constitution of the United States. He was tried
a second time for the murder of Bates, was convicted
and was hanged. Thenceforth there was bad blood between the

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Bakers and the Whites, involving the Guarads on one side
and the Howards on the other, as allies to the
respective clans. In eighteen ninety eight, Tom Baker, reputed to
be the best shot in the Kentucky Mountains, bought a
note given by A. B. Howard, for whom he was
cutting timber. Howard became furious, a fight ensued. One of

(04:57):
the Howard boys and Burt Stores were killed from ambush,
and the elder Howard was wounded. Thereupon, Jim Howard, son
of the clan chief sought out tom Baker's father, who
was county attorney, compelled the unarmed old man to fall
upon his knees and shot him twenty five times with
careful aim to avoid a vital spot, and so killed

(05:20):
him by inches. Howard was tried and convicted of murder,
but it is said that pardon was offered him if
he will go to the state capitol at Frankfort and
assassinate Governor Goebel, which he is charged with having done.
In Clay County, where this feud waged, the judge, clerk, sheriff,

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and jailer were of the White clan. Tom Baker killed
a brother of the sheriff and took to the hills
rather than give himself up to a court ruled by
his fullman, then Albert Gerrard, was fired upon from Ambush
while riding with his wife to a religious meeting. He
moved to Pineville, in another county, under guard of two

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armed men, both of whom were shot dead from the bresh.
Governor Bradley sent state troops into Clay County, and tom
Baker surrendered to them. Baker was tried in the Knox
Circuit Court on a change of venue and was sentenced
to the penitentiary for life. On appeal, as attorney's secured

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a reversal of the verdict and Baker was released on bail.
The new trial was set for June eighteen ninety nine.
Governor Bradley again sent a company of state militia with
a gatling gun to Manchester, where the trial was to
be held. Baker was put in a guard tent surrounded
by a squad of soldiers. One hundred yards or so

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from this tent stood the unoccupied residence of the Sheriff,
at the foot of a wooded mountain. An assassin hidden
in this house spied upon the guard tent, and when
Baker appeared, shot him dead with a rifle, then took
to the woods and escaped. I quote now from a
history of this feud published in Munsey's Magazine of November

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nineteen o three. Captain John Bryan of the Second Kentucky
said to the widow of the murdered Tom Baker, after
they returned from the funeral, Missus Baker, why don't you
leave this miserable country and escape from these terrible feuds.
Move away and teach your children to forget Captain Brian

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said the widow, and she spoke evenly and quietly. I
have twelve sons who will be the chief aim of
my life to bring them up to avenge their father's death.
Each day I shall show my boys the handkerchiefs stained
with his blood and tell them who murdered him. Corsican
vendetta or Kentucky feud let our language and race against aged,

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long isolation and an environment that keeps humanity feral to
the core. Shortly after Baker's death, four Griffins of the
White Howard faction ambushed Big John Philpotts and his cousin,
wounding the former severely and the latter mortally. Big John
fought them from behind a log and killed all four.

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On July seventeenth, eighteen ninety nine, four of the Philpotts
were attacked by four Morrises of the Howard side. Three
men were killed, three mortally wounded, and the other two
were severely injured. No arrests were made. Finally, in nineteen
oh one, the two clans fought a pitched battle in
front of the courthouse in Manchester. At its conclusion, they

(08:36):
formally signed a truce. This is a mere scenario of
a feud in the wealthiest and best schooled county of
eastern Kentucky. Two of the families involved were of distinguished lineage,
counting in their ranks a governor, three generals, a member
of Congress, and a prohibition candidate for the presidency. In

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reviewing this feud, Governor Bradley stated, the whole fault in
Clay County is a vitiated public sentiment and a failure
of the civil authorities to do their duty. The laws
are insufficient for the governor to apply a remedy. Such
feuds have been in progress more or less for years,
and no governor of the state has ever been able

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to quell them. They have terminated only when their force
was spent by one side or the other side being
killed or moving out of the country. The laws are
insufficient for the governor to apply a remedy, one naturally asks,
how so. The answer is that the governor cannot send
troops into a county except upon request of the civil authorities,

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and they must go as a posse to civil officers.
In most feuds, these officers are partisans. In fact, it
is a favor of ruse for one clan to win
or usurp the county offices before making war. Hence, the
state troops would only serve as a reinforcement for one
of the contents ending factions. To show how this works out,

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we will sketch briefly the course of another feud. In
Rowan County, Kentucky. In eighteen eighty four, there was an
election quarrel between two members of the Martin and Tolliver families.
The Logan sided with the Martins, and the Youngs with
the Tollivers. The Logan Martin faction elected their candidate for

(10:23):
sheriff by a margin of twelve votes. Then there was
an affray in which one Logan was killed and three
were wounded. As usual in feuds, no immediate redress was attempted,
but the injured clan plotted at vengeance with deadly deliberation.
After five months, Dick Martin killed Floyd Tolliver. His own

(10:44):
people worked the trick of arresting him themselves, and sent
him to Winchester for safekeeping. The Tollivers succeeded in having
him brought back on a forged order and killed him
when he was bound and helpless. The leader of the
young Tolliver fact was a notorious bravo named Craig Tolliver.
To strengthen his power, he became candidate for Town Marshal

(11:07):
of Moorhead, and he won the office by intimidation at
the polls. Then for two years a bushwhacking war went on.
Three times the governor sent troops into Rowan County, but
each time they found nothing but creeks and thickets to fight.
Then he prevailed upon the clans to sign a truce
and expatriate their chiefs for one year in distant states.

(11:30):
Craig Tolliver obeyed the order by going to Missouri, but
returned several months before the expiration of his term, resumed office,
and renewed his atrocities. In the warfare that ensued. All
the county officers were involved, from the judge down. In
eighteen eighty seven, Proctor not Governor of Kentucky said in

(11:53):
his message of the Logan Tolliver Feud, though composed of
only a small portion of the community, these factions have
succeeded by their violence and overawing and silencing the voice
of the peaceful element, and intimidating the officers of the law.
Having their origin partly party ranker they have ceased to

(12:14):
have any political significance and have become contests of personal
ambition and revenge, each party seeking apparently to possess itself
of the machinery of justice, order that it may, under
the forms of law, seek the gratification of personal animosities.
During the present year, the local leader of one of
these factions came in possession of the office of police

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Judge of the town of Moorhead. Under color of the
authority of that office, and sustained by an armband of adherents,
he exercised despotic sway over the town and its vicinage.
He banished citizens who were obnoxious to him, and in
one instance, after arresting two citizens who seem to have

(12:59):
been guilty of no offense, he and his party, attended
by a deputy sheriff of the county, murdered them in
cold blood. This act of atrocity fully aroused the community.
A posse, acting under the authority of a warrant from
the county judge, attacked the police judge and his adherents
on the twenty second of June last, killed several of

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their number, and put the rest of flight and temporarily
restored something like tranquility to the community. The proceedings of
the Circuit Court, which was held in August, were not
calculated to inspire the citizens with confidence in securing justice.
The report of the Adjutant General on the subject shows,

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from information derived from representative men, without reference to party affiliation,
that the Judge of the Circuit Court seemed so far
under the influence of the reputed leader of one of
the factions as to permit such an organization of the
grand jury, he says, will effectually prevent the indictment of
members of that faction for the most flagrant crimes. The

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posse here mentioned was organized by Daniel Boone Logan, a
cousin of the two young men who had been murdered,
a college graduate and a lawyer of good standing. With
the assent of the governor, he gathered fifty to seventy
five picked men and armed them with the best modern
rifles and revolvers. Some of the men were of his

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own clan, others he hired. His plan was to end
the war by exterminating the Tollivers. The posse, led by
Logan and the sheriff, suddenly surrounded the town of Moorhead,
everybody gave in except Craig Tolliver, J. Tolliver, Bud Tolliver,
and Hiram Cook, who barricaded themselves in the railroad station,

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where all of them were shot dead by the posse boone.
Logan was indicted for murder. At the trial, he admitted
the killings, but he showed that the feud had cost
a life of not less than twenty three men, that
not one person had been legally punished for these murders,
and that he had acted for the good of the
public in ending this infamous struggle. The court accepted this

(15:13):
view of the case, the community sustained it, and the
war was closed. A feud in the restricted sense here used,
is an armed conflict between families, each endeavoring to exterminate
or drive out the other. It spread swiftly, not only
to bloodkin and relatives by marriage, but to friends and

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retainers as well. It may lie dormant for a time,
perhaps for a generation, and then burst forth with recruited strength,
long after its original cause has ceased to interest anyone,
or maybe after it has been forgotten. Such feuds are
by no means prevalent throughout the length and breadth of Appalacia,

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but are restricted mostly to certain well defined districts of
which the chief and extent of territory, as well as
in the number and ferocity of its wars, is a
country round the upper waters of the Kentucky Licking, Big
Sandy Tug, and Cumberland Rivers, embracing many of the mountain
counties of eastern Kentucky and adjoining parts of West Virginia,

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Old Virginia, and Tennessee. In this thinly settled region, probably
five hundred men have been slain in feued since our
centennial year, and only three of the murderers, so far
as I know, have been executed by law. The active feudus,
as a rule, include only a small part of the community,

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but public sentiment in few districts approves or at least tolerates,
of vendetta, just as it does in Corsica or the Balkans.
Those citizens who are not directly implicated take pains to
hear little and see less. They keep their mouths shut.
They can neither be persuaded, bribed, nor coerced into informing

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or testifying again either side, but on the contrary, will
throw dust in the eyes of an investigator or try
to stare him down. A jury composed of such men
will not convict anybody. When a feud is raging, nobody
outside the warring clans is in any danger at all.
A stranger safer in the heart of feudom than he

(17:20):
would be in Chicago or New York, so long as
he attends strictly to his own business, asks no questions,
and tells no tales. If, on the contrary, he should
express horror or curiosity, he is regarded as a busy
buddy or suspected as a spy, and is likely to
be run out of the country or even waylaid and

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silenced forever. What causes feuds? Some of them start as
mere drunken rows, or in a dispute over a game
of cards, others and quarrels over land boundaries or other property.
The Hatfield McCoy feud started because Randolph McCay penned up
two wild hogs that were claimed by Floyd Hatfield. Despite

(18:05):
over these hogs broke out two years later, and one
partisan was killed from ambush. The feud itself began in
eighteen eighty two over a debt of one dollar and
seventy five cents with the hogs and the bushwhacking brought
up in recrimination. Love of women is the primary cause
or the secondary aggravation of many a feud. Some of

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the most widespread and delhias vendettas have originated in political strifes.
It should be understood that national and state politics cut
little or no figure in these wars. Local politics in
most of the Mountain counties is merely a factional fight
in which family matters and business interests are involved, and

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the contest becomes bitterly personal. On that account, this explains
most of the collusion or partisanship of county officers and
their remissness in enforcing the law. In murder cases, family
ties or political alliances override even the oath of office.

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Within the past year, I have heard a deputy sheriff
admit nonchalantly on the stand that when a homicide was
committed near him and he was the only officer in
the vicinity, he advised the slayer to take to the
mountains and hide out. The judge questioned him sharply on
this point, was reassured by the witness that it was so,

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and then offered no comment at all. Within the same period,
in another but not distant court, a desperado from the
Shelton Laurel, on trial for murder, admitted that he had
shot six men since he moved over from Tennessee to
North Carolina, and swore that while he was being held
in jail pending trial for this last offense, the sheriff

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permitted him to keep a gun in his cell, drink
whiskey in the jail, and eat at table with the
family of the sheriff. Feuds spread not only through clanned fealty,
but also because they offer excellent chances to pay off
old scores. The mountaineer has a long memory. The average
highlander is fiery and combative by nature, but at the

(20:17):
same time cunning and vindictive. If publicly insulted, he will
strike at once, but if he feels wrong by some
act that does not demand instant retaliation, he will brood
over it and plot patiently to get his enemy at
a disadvantage. Some mountaineers always fight fair, but many of
them prefer to wait and watch quietly until the foe

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gets drunk and unwary, or until he is engaged in
some illegal or scandalous act, or until he is known
to be carrying a concealed weapon, whereupon he can be
shot down unexpectedly, and his assailant can prove by friendly
witnesses that he acted in self defense. So if a
man be inud he may be assassinated from ambush by

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someone who is not concerned in the clan trouble, but
who has hated him for years on another account, and
who knows that his death now will be charged up
to the opposing faction. From the earliest times, it has
been customary for our highlanders to go armed most of
the time. This was a necessity in the old Indian

(21:24):
fighting days and throughout the Ku kluxing and white capping
era following the Civil War. Such a habit, once formed,
is hard to eradicate even today. In all parts of
Appalasia that I am familiar with, most of the young
man I judge, and many of the older ones carry
concealed weapons. Among them, I have never seen a stand

(21:46):
up and knock down fight according to the rules of
the ring. They have many rough and tumble brawls in
which they slug, wrestle, kick, bite, strangle until one gets
the other down. We're at the one on top continues
to maul his victim until he cries enough oftener a
club or stone will be used in mad endeavor to

(22:08):
knock the opponents senseless at a blow. There's no compunction
about striking file, and very little about double teeming. Let
us pause long enough to admit that this was the
British and American way of man handling, universal among the
common people until well until the nineteenth century, and the

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mountaineers are still ignorant of any other except fighting with weapons.
Many of the young men carry homemade billies or brass knuckles.
Each man and boy has at least a pocket knife
with serviceable blade. Fights with such crude weapons are frequent.
There are few spectacles more sickening than two powerful but

(22:50):
awkward men slashing each other with common jack knives, though
the fatalities are much less frequent than in gun fighting.
I've known two old mountain press to draw knives in
each other at the close of a sermon. The typical
Highland bravo always carries a revolver or an automatic pistol.
This is likely to be a weapon of large bore

(23:12):
and good stopping power that is worn in a shoulder holster,
concealed under the coat or vest or shirt. Many mountaineers
are good shots with such arms, though not so deadly
quick as the frontiersman of our old time West. In fact,
they cannot be so quick without wearing the weapon exposed.
When a highlander has time, he prefers to hold his

(23:35):
pistol on both hands, left clasped over right, and aims
it as he would a rifle. To a Westerner. Such
gun practice looks absurd, but it is accurate beyond question.
Few mountain gunfighters fail to score at least one victim.
The average mountin woman is as combative in spirit as

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her menfolk. She would despise any man who took in
sold her injury without showing fight. In fact, the woman,
in many cases deliberately stirs up trouble out of vanity
or for the sheer excitement of it. Some of the
older women displayed the ferocity of she wolves. The mother
of a large family said, in my presence, with the calm,

(24:16):
earnestness of one fully experienced, if a fellow treated me
the way blank did, I'd get me a forty some
odd and shoot enough meat off his bones to feed
a hound dog. A week, three of this woman's brothers
had been shot dead. In phrase, one of them killed
the first husband of her sister, who married again, and

(24:37):
whose second husband was killed by a man with whom
she then tried a third matrimonial venture. Such matters may
not be interesting in themselves, but they give one pause
when he learns, in addition, that these people are received
as friends and on a footing of equality by everybody
in their community. That the mountaineers are fierce and relentles

(25:00):
less in their feuds is beyond denial. A warfare of
bushwhacking and assassination knows no refinements. Quarter is neither given
nor expected. Property, however, is not violated, and women are
not often injured. There have been some atrocious exceptions. In
the Hatfield McCoy feud, Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace attacked

(25:22):
the latter's wife and her mother at night, dragged both
women from bed, and Cap beat the old woman with
a cow's tail that had been clipped off just to
see her jump. He broke two of the women's ribs,
leaving her injured for life, while Tom beat his wife. Later,
on New Year's Night eighteen eighty eight, a gang of

(25:43):
the Hatfield surrounded the home of Randolph McCoy killed the
eldest daughter, Ala Fair, broke her mother's ribs and knocked
her senseless with their guns and killed the son, Calvin.
In several instances, women who fought in defense of their
homes have been killed, as in the case of Missus
Charles Daniels and her sixteen year old daughter in Pike County, Kentucky,

(26:07):
in November nineteen o nine. The Mountain women do not
shrink from feuds, but on the contrary, excite and cheer
their men to desperate deeds, and sometimes fight by their side.
In the French ever saw feud, a woman, learning that
her unarmed husband was besieged by his foes, seized his rifle,
filled her open with cartridges, rushed past the firing line,

(26:31):
and stood by her old man until he beat his
assailants off. When men are hiding out in the laurel,
it is the women's part which they never shirk, to
carry them food and information. In every feud, each clan
has a leader, a man of prominence, either on account
of his wealth or his political influence, or his shrewdness

(26:54):
or his physical prowess. This leader's orders are obeyed, while
hostilities last with the same unquestioning loyalty, as the old
Scottish retainer showed to his chieftain. Either the leader or
someone acting for him supplies the men with food, with
weapons if they need them, with ammunition, and with money.

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Sometimes mercenaries are hired. Mister Fox says that in one
local war, I remember four dollars per day were the
wages of the fighting man and the leader. On one occasion,
while besieging his enemies in the county courthouse, tried to
purchase a cannon, and from no other place than the
state arsenal, and from no other personage than the governor himself.

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And some of the few professional bravos have been employed
who would assassinate for a few dollars anybody who was
pointed out to them, provided he was alien to their
own clans. The character of the Highland bravo is precisely
that of the Western bad man, as pictured by Jed
Parker in Stuart Edward White's Own and Knights. It's a

(28:02):
good deal of romance being written about the bad man,
and there's about the same amount of nonsense. The bad
man is just a plain murderer, neither more nor less.
He never does get into a real good plane stand
up gunfight if he can possibly help it. His killings
are done from behind a door or when he's got

(28:23):
his man dead to rights. There's Sam Cook. You've all
heard of him. He had nerve, of course, and when
he was backed into a corner he made good and
he was sure sudden death with a gun. But when
he went out for a man deliberate, he didn't take
no special chances. The point is that these year bad

(28:44):
men are a low down, miserable proposition and plain cold
blooded murderers, willing to wait for a sure thing and
without no compunction. Whatever the bad man takes you unawares,
when you're sleeping or talking, or drinking or looking to
see what for a day it's going to be. Anyway,
he don't give you no show, and sooner or later

(29:04):
he's going to get you in the safest and easiest
way for himself. There ain't no romance about that, and
there is no romance about a real Mountain feud. It
is marked by suave treachery, double teeming, layweighing, blind shooting,
and general heartlessness and brutality. If one side refuses to

(29:26):
assassinate but seeks open, honorable combat, as has happened in
several feuds, it is sure to be beaten. Whoever appeals
to the law is sure to be beaten. In either
case he is considered a fool or a coward by
most of the countryside. Our highlander, untouched by the culture
of the world about him, has never been taught the

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meaning of fair play magnanimity. To a fallen foe, he
would regard as sure a proof of an adult brain.
The motive of one who forgives his enemy is utterly
beyond him his comprehension. As for bushwhacking, it's as fire
for one as it is for the other. You can't
fight a man fire and square will shoot you in

(30:10):
the back. A poor man can't fight money in the courts.
In this he is simply his ancient Scotch or English
ancestor born over again. Such was the code of Jacobite
Scotland and Tutor England and back. There is where our
mountaineer belongs in the scale of human evolution. The feud,

(30:30):
as miss Miles puts, it is an outbreak of perverted
family affection. Its mainspring is an honorable clan loyalty. It
is a direct consequence of the clan organization that our
mountaineers preserve as it was handed down to them by
their forefathers. The implacability of their vengeance, the treacheries they practice,

(30:51):
the murders from ambush, are invariable features of clan warfare,
wherever and by whomsoever it is waged. They are not
vices or crimes peculiar to the Kentuckian or the Corsican,
or the Sicilian, or the Albanian or the Arab, but
natural results of clan government, which in turn is a

(31:12):
result of isolation of physical environment, of geographical position unfavorable
to free intercourse and commerce with the world at large.
The most hideous feature of the feud is a shooting
down of unarmed or unwarned men. Assassination, in our modernize
is the last and lowest infamy of a coward, such

(31:35):
it truly is when committed in the civilized society of
our day. But in studying primitive races, or in going
back along the line of our own ancestry to the
civilized society of two centuries ago, we must face and
acknowledge the strange paradox of a valorous and honorable people,
according to their lights, who in certain cases practice assassination

(31:59):
without compunction, and in fact with pride. History is read
with it. In those very richest ages of our race
that Professor Shaler cited, until a century or two ago,
throughout Christendom, the secret murder of enemies was committed unblushingly
by nobles and kings and prelates, often with a pious

(32:21):
thus saith the Lord. It was practiced by men valiant
in open battle, and by those wives in the councils
of the realm. Take Scotland, for example, as pictured by
a native writer. No tenant, nor practice, nor influence, nor
power nor principality in the Scotland of the past as
outbied assassination and ascendency or in moment, not theoretically indeed,

(32:47):
but practically, it occupied for centuries a distinct almost as
supreme place in her political constitution, was in fact the understood,
if not recognized, expedient, always in reserve, should other milder
and more hallowed methods fail of accomplishing the desired political
or it might be religious consummation. For centuries, such justice,

(33:11):
as it was exercise was haphazard and rude, and practically
there was no law. But the will of the stronger few,
if any of the great families, but had their special
feud and feuds, once originated, survived for ages. To forget
them would have been treason to the dead. And while
purposes of revenge were handed down from generation to generation

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as a sacred legacy, to take an enemy at a
disadvantage was not deemed mean and contemptible. But of all
the arts in which the wise excel nature's chief masterpiece,
to do it boldly and adroitly was to win a
peculiar halo of renown, And thus assassination ceased to be

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the weapon of the avowed desperado, and came to be
wielded lushingly, not only by soul called men of honor,
but by the so called religious as well. A noble
did not scruple to use it against his king, and
the king himself felt no dishonour in resorting to it
Against the dangerous noble James the First was hacked to

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death in the night by Sir Robert Graham, and James
the First rid himself of the imperious and intriguing Douglas
by suddenly stabbing him while within his own royal palace
under protection of a safe conduct. The leaders of the
Reformation discerned an assassination that of their enemies the special

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work and judgment of God. When the assassination of Cardinal
b ten took place in fifteen forty six, all the
savage details of it were set down by Knox with
unbridled gusto. These things we rate merely is his own
ingenuous comment on his performance. The burden of George buchanans

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d jor Regni of Putscoto's is the lawfulness or righteousness
of the removal by assassination or any other fitting or
convenient means of incompetent kings, whether heneously wicked or tyrannical,
or merely unwise and weak of purpose. And he cites

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as a case in point, and an example in time coming,
the murder of James the Third, which, if we were
only on account of the assassin's hideous travesty of the
last offices of the Church, were deserved to be held
in unique and everlasting detestation. Henderson Old World, Scotland, one
eighty two to one eighty six. Yet the Scots have

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always been a notably warlike and fearless race. So two
are our southern mountaineers. In the Civil War and the
Spanish War, they send a larger proportion of their men
into the service than almost any other section of our country.
Let us not overlook the fact that it demands courage
of a high order for one to stay in a

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feud infested district, conscious of being marked for slaughter, stay
there month in and month out, year in and year out,
not knowing at what moment he may be beset by
overpowering numbers, from what laurel thicket he may be shot,
or at what hour of the night he may be
called to his door and struck dead before his family

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on the credit side of their valor. Then be it
entered that few mountaineers will shrink from such ordeal, when,
even from no fault of their own, it is thrust
upon them. The blood feud is simply a horrible survival
of medievalism. It is the highlander's misfortune to be stranded
far out of the course of civilization. He is no

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worse than that by gone age that he really belongs to.
In some ways he is better. He is far less
cruel than his ancestors were than our ancestors were. He
does not torture with the tumbrel, the stalks, the ducking stool,
the pillory, the branding irons, the ear pruners, and nostril shears,

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the tongue branks that were in everyday use under the
old criminal code. He does not tie a woman to
a cart's tail and publicly lash or bare back until
it streams with blood. Nor does he hang a man
for picking somebody's pocket of twelve pence and a farthing.
He does not go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for

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the sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their
chains in rage or horror. He does not turn executions
of criminals into public festivals. He never has been known
to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he
hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails
and burn them before his eyes, with a mob crowding

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about to jeer the poor devil's flinching, or to compliment
him on his Yet all these pleasantries were proper and
legal in Christian Britain two centuries ago. This isolated and
belated people who still carry on the blood feud are
not half so much to blame for such a savage
survival as the rich, powerful, educated twentieth century nation that

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abandons them as if they were hopelessly derelict or wrecked.
It took but a few decades to civilize Scotland. How
much swifter and surer and easier are our means of
enlightenment today. Let us not forget that these Highlanders are
blood of our blood and bone of our bone. For
they are old time Americans to a man, proud of

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their nationality, and passionately loyal to the flag, that they,
more than any other of us, according to their strength,
have fought and suffered for end of section fifteen, read
by Bry's christ Ohio