The Hatfields and the McCoys by Otis K. K. Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

have to pay their own expenses.
    Nearly ten days passed before Perry Cline arrived in Louisville for the prisoners. By then not only had West Virginia refused to bear the expenses of their journey to Louisville, but the United States marshal had also refused to accept responsibility. Cline, therefore, interrupted his plans to go to Frankfort, where he persuaded Governor Buckner to seek a special appropriation from the Kentucky legislature for the costs involved. On March 16 he returned to Louisville and arranged for the journey back to Pikeville. 7
    While the West Virginians remained in Louisville, Wall Hatfield continued to attract reporters. He steadfastly maintained that not a single man among them had anything to do with the murder of the McCoy brothers. Instead, he fastened the guilt upon Devil Anse and his sons, Cap, Johnse, and Bob, and four or five others. With a sense of humor, he then expressed the wish to one reporter that his newspaper would retract a printed report that Wall had seven wives. “I ain’t never had but one,” declared Wall, “and I don’t want any more.” 8
    After some disagreement over whether the appeal of the habeas corpus case should go directly to the United States Supreme Court, Judge Barr ruled that it should follow regular procedure and be heard in the United States Circuit Court. With the prisoners no longer on hand, the case presented in the Circuit Court before Judge Howell E. Jackson had little of the drama of that heard in Judge Barr’s court and attracted relatively little attention.
    On April 5 Eustace Gibson opened the testimony by reviewing the evidence presented at the earlier trial. He again emphasized the wrongs done the prisoners through their illegal seizure, which constituted a violation of the Constitution of the United States. Knott admitted that the West Virginians had been taken from their state illegally, but he denied that the mode of their apprehension in any way affected the legality of their arrest once they were in Kentucky. He declared that the arguments of the opposing counsel seemed to imply that “the Constitution of the United States was drawn expressly to give each state the power to harbor criminals.” Governor Wilson even alluded to the possibility of war between two states. Hardin expressed no desire to speak. Judge Jackson, who had to remind all the speakers to confine their remarks to the issue in question, granted the appeal of the case to the United States Supreme Court. 9
    On April 13 Gibson and Knott, who had served together in the United States House of Representatives, arrived in Washington to present the cases of their respective states. The attorneys succeeded in having the Supreme Court advance the case, know as Plyant Mahon, appellant v. Ahner Justice, jailer of Pike County, Ky., on the docket and began their arguments on April 23. Speaking for one hour and thirty minutes, Gibson held that the “taking and holding” of Mahon (and inferentially of the other eight men) “was one continuous act by the same officers of the State of Kentucky,” and “the act 01 Phillips in capturing and Cline in locking up in jail without warrants of mittimus, were both wrongful acts of the State of Kentucky.” Knott, who spoke for only about twenty minutes, maintained that the question was one of law and in no way a case between the states. Had it been, West Virginia should have instituted her suit in the Supreme Court, which had original and exclusive jurisdiction, and not in the District Court. 10
    A reporter for the Wheeling Intelligencer noted a general opinion that West Virginia’s procedures had been “wrong from the beginning” and that Wilson had “applied at the wrong shop for redress.” West Virginia, it was feared, might be “kicked out of the Supreme Court on the question of form, without reference to the merit of her case—and it is conceded that the merit was