Family Feuds before the war

godofredus

Sergeant Major
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Location
Chicago
I've been reading "Plain Folk of the Old South," by Frank L. Owsley - a really strange and fascinating book and probably the first attempt at true use of social statistics long before Fogel and Engerman's "Time on the Cross.." But instead of focusing on slavery, Owsley focuses on "middling" white folk - neither wealthy planters, nor really poor, but "plain folk."

There is a lot missing from the book, however. For one, no "Negroes" except in a few statistical tables.
No violence either - no duels, robberies, shootings, murders, etc.

But what sort of caught my eye and thought was: no feuds.

I trust most of us here remember the feud in Huckleberry Finn between the Shepherdsons and Grangerfords (chapters 17-19) (you can read it here: http://www.online-literature.com/twain/huckleberry_finn/17/)

Looking back and re-reading the chapters I realize Twain was talking about very upper-class white folk - Huck is living with the Grangerfords and the Colonel owns upwards of 100 slaves. So I started to look for feuds elsewhere and the ever reliable Wiki has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_feuds_in_the_United_States - and the only pre-Civil War feud Wiki mentions isn't even a feud - it is the regulator/moderator war in Texas 1839-1844.
There are plenty of feuds between (among?) the Plain Folk after the Civil War - Hatfield-McCoy being the most famous, or course.

There is so much in Huckleberry Finn - published in 1884, written between 1876 and 1884, and set (more or less) in 1845 - that is probably true of the life in the pre war south. But not being able to find any account of feuds before the Civil War makes me wonder if Twain moved post war events back thirty years.

So going back to Owsley - did he really omit feuds because they didn't exist? He omitted duels (maybe that was strictly upper class), inter-racial sex (rape), all of his folk are church going believers (so maybe Andy Jackson was an anomaly) mayhem (ear-biting and eye-gouging in a fight), and murder, boxing and wrestling (Abe Lincoln and Jack Armstrong may have been in Illinois but I am sure they were closer to southerners).

So did family feuds really not exist before the war, and was there a breakdown of authority and an increase in violence after the war? Thoughts and comments?
 
Might be of interest, published 1854 and available online:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8FsvAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover

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There are a few other accounts of that feud also, that can be found by googling the names.

Another example, from the Sept. 1, 1858 Charleston SC Courier:

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I just took a quick look at your answer - thank you, will follow up at a more civilized hour it now being 4:27 am...
 
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