Days of Darkness by John Ed Ed Pearce Read Free Book Online Page B

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    Like many feud leaders, Captain Bill Strong was a curious combination of altruist and tyrant. Having served in the Union army, he apparently took the Union cause seriously and became known in the hill country as the protector of the newly freed slaves. On the other hand, he was a brutal enemy. After the war, when a man ran against him or his choice for office, Strong was apt to take it as a personal affront. If the offending party did not withdraw, he frequently wound up dead. Bill Strong wanted the law enforced to accommodate Bill Strong; he wanted his followers left alone, taxes on his land kept low, and land disputes settled in his favor.
    But the worst aspect of his rule was his tendency to act as commanding officer long after the war was over. He is said to have held courts-martial and condemned to death those who challenged his control. These courts-martial, it was reported, were held at night with only a few trusted men present. There was no need for the accused to be on hand. Captain Bill would review the sins of the offender, ponder the case and, in most cases, sentence the offender to death. Usually one of his trusted lieutenants was given the job of killingthe condemned man at a convenient moment. No hurry. Sometimes it was months before the blow fell. But it fell, invariably. One day the doomed man would be riding along, going to work or to the store, probably not knowing he was doomed, when a shot would ring out from ambush.
    Wilson Callahan, John Amis and two of his cousins, possibly others, went the way of the court-martial. The Amises fought back and are said to have claimed more than two dozen of the Strong forces. But Strong’s executions had an inexorable air about them, as if by fate decreed, and one by one Captain Bill whittled away the enemy. Soon, few men wanted to challenge him. But in the mid-seventies a series of violent incidents marked the beginning of the end for the captain.
    The events of 1874 involved not only Bill Strong but the Littles, the Jetts, and the Cockrells (sometimes spelled Cockrill), large and determined families. In the early summer of 1874 Jerry Little, not the most popular man in the hills, started a rumor, probably motivated by jealousy, charging one of James Cockrell’s daughters with pregnancy or lack of chastity. A slur against the virtue of a female in the family could not be tolerated, and the Cockrells set out to avenge her honor. Two of Little’s allies were shot, one killed. But at about the same time, Jerry Little shot and killed Curtis Jett Jr. in a bar near the Jackson courthouse. In return, Hiram Jett, Curtis’s brother, shot but failed to kill Jerry Little. The fight persuaded the Jetts to join the Cockrells against the Littles.
    Captain Bill Strong couldn’t keep out of it. While the Littles and Jetts were banging away at each other, David Flinchum shot and killed a Negro. Ordinarily this would have caused hardly a comment, but now Bill Strong had made himself the special protector of the Negro population. The Flinchums joined the Cockrells for protection, so Strong joined the Littles against the Cockrells, and the lines were drawn. But at that point Captain Strong threw the whole county into confusion and brought in state troops for the first time by staging a coup d’état. Marshaling about two dozen of his old wartime followers, Strong rode into Jackson and took over the courthouse without firing a shot. He just walked in, told people in the offices to leave, and took over.
    Feeling it advisable not to resist, the county officials in their offices at the time filed out and held a meeting at the home of Jim Cockrell, and decided to send a message to the governor complaining that there had been an insurrection and that Strong had illegally captured the courthouse. Governor Preston H. Leslie was astounded; he had had trouble out of the mountain courthouses before, and requests fortroops to allow courts to function, but he had never