A Southern Feud Sandwich, War In The Middle, Garnished in Blood

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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She looks harmless. It's a pre-war image dripping elegance and probably a lot of money. Eliza Nichols, wife of a plantation owner ( Phillip ) near Harrisonburg, Catahouia Parish in Lousiana also carried a pistol somewhere. She shot her neighbor.


I realize this may belong in a different forum ( and feel free to move ). The thing is, a long, tragic and brutal feud began when a woman shot the man she felt had insulted her. Kaboom. I'm certain our experts can find a lot of erroneous stuff in the account here- I poked around and as usual it's impossible to get an accurate read on all the ' What Happened ' without getting contrary information. Found this one- seems fairly objective. Like all feuds, no one won.

Hatfield/McCoy, Lee/Peacock- Liddell/Jones. Famous feuds linger as the stuff of legend, single common factor would be the amount of blood on both sides. No one holds the prize for best grudge holder- these are stories taking place in the southern portion of our country but it's cold up here. You'd have to bundle up a large portion of the year to pursue a feud.

It's a long story. Aren't all feuds? For the sake of brevity, a quick background. When the Grant administration announced the appoint of Cuthbert Jones to an important position all heck broke loose. His background story apparently included an indictment for murder and he was living elsewhere and was considered by many to be a fugitive from justice. So not an ideal candidate. Apparently the feud began well before his birth, passed through a whole war and resumed on the side. Had Cuthbert not been presented as candidate to this position the entire feud would have passed unnoticed except locally. We've never been happy with scandal associated with high office. This one had dead bodies in its wake.

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Liddell forever insisted he had no knowledge of what Eliza had in mind much less that she carried a pistol. Hang on.

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Here's what's so weird. Eliza and Phillip seem the main players, she as the insulted woman, he as the husband who should have been the one in a snit. It became the Jones-Liddell feud, not the Jones-Nichols. Huh.

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There were quite a few other actors in the drama and more than one death of men whose names were neither Jones, Liddell or Nichols.

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I ' think ' Charles Jones was 2nd in command of the 17th Louisiana? If that's wrong, please do correct it. Liddell was eventually a general- some military training although his experience at West Point was only one year. St. John Richardson Liddell was terrific friends with Davis.

Next post, the rest of this war sandwich.
 
Disclaimer again- please correct erroneous stuff here maybe without being annoyed over what's incorrect? I'm not pretending to know much, it's just an awfully tragic story. That there was peace while both fought on the same side in the ACW means we can, in fact, drop hate.

I said it was long.
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BOY it must have been hazardous as a lawyer 150 years ago. Holy heck. More victims of the reconstituted fued.

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Mrs. Jones as peace maker seems to have played a central role in getting everyone to stop shooting each other- feud begun by a woman, cease fire ( at least ) achieved by another. Then she took a trip overseas.

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This awful thing went on and on and on. Without fuel, hate tends to dissolve. It needs a lot of careful nurturing to stay alive. They fed it copiously, frequently blood.

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... would have been allowed to rest and have soon been forgotten altogether. IMO we're not actually good at hate, we're just extremely prone to it. Like it's a virus or some malignant bacteria. There's a cure.

I can't find whether or not Eliza Nichols remained helpful feeding the beast. The woman who started the entire fiasco fades from the narrative. I would hope she was horrified by the body count.
 
I was amazed at the number of feuds lasting years and years, thanks for yours @Championhilz - quite a few and ( I think ) at least two had their origin in the war. One- the Lee-Peacock feud, I couldn't get a read on so didn't post. Someone better researched would have to and I'd genuinely like to know if both behaved poorly or if one side or the other was mostly responsible.
 
I've read a little about the Lee-Peacock feud, but didn't get the impression there was that much known about it.

Was curious as my ggg grandfather lived in the main county where it occurred and suddenly moved away to Missouri and changed his family name. I wonder if it had to do with the feud. I'll look at whatever I'd read about it.
 
Disclaimer again- please correct erroneous stuff here maybe without being annoyed over what's incorrect? I'm not pretending to know much, it's just an awfully tragic story. That there was peace while both fought on the same side in the ACW means we can, in fact, drop hate.

I said it was long.
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BOY it must have been hazardous as a lawyer 150 years ago. Holy heck. More victims of the reconstituted fued.

View attachment 331938View attachment 331939
Mrs. Jones as peace maker seems to have played a central role in getting everyone to stop shooting each other- feud begun by a woman, cease fire ( at least ) achieved by another. Then she took a trip overseas.

View attachment 331940View attachment 331941

View attachment 331942View attachment 331943

This awful thing went on and on and on. Without fuel, hate tends to dissolve. It needs a lot of careful nurturing to stay alive. They fed it copiously, frequently blood.

View attachment 331944View attachment 331945

... would have been allowed to rest and have soon been forgotten altogether. IMO we're not actually good at hate, we're just extremely prone to it. Like it's a virus or some malignant bacteria. There's a cure.

I can't find whether or not Eliza Nichols remained helpful feeding the beast. The woman who started the entire fiasco fades from the narrative. I would hope she was horrified by the body count.
Wow...just wow..just shows in some ways how times don’t change..
 
Bare with as I'm trying to recall the story.

But I Had a 2nd Great Uncle that was murdered... Don't know the reason .. It was In FL if recall correct but before it trial the supposed suspect magically vanished... Not saying his 7 brothers had and any to do with it who knows early 1900s post WWI
 
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I've read a little about the Lee-Peacock feud, but didn't get the impression there was that much known about it.

Was curious as my ggg grandfather lived in the main county where it occurred and suddenly moved away to Missouri and changed his family name. I wonder if it had to do with the feud. I'll look at whatever I'd read about it.


Hiiiiiii! You always have the best links to this stuff- wouldn't that be crazy if there was a connection? I wasn't sure enough about the facts concerning people swept up in the feud ( internet...... ) so didn't post more about it. Just from reading era newspapers you can't ascertain whether both sides were out of hand or one tragic event caused tragic reprisals. What's so sad is it does sound like a post war, who-was-on-which-side origin.


But I Had a 2nd Great Uncle that was murdered..


That kind of thing makes you wonder how much plain, old murder happened ? I say that because my husband's family lost someone murdered not long post war, an unsolved case and my grgrgrandfather mysteriously vanished in the Gold Rush. Poof. Everyone apparently knew who vanished him- nothing much was done. Like it wasn't a horrendous thing, you know?
 
Here's a link to an explanation of the Lee-Peacock feud that starts with a disagreement over a female family member that ended in a shooting. It's a more coherent explanation than most of the histories of the feud. What one has to remember is that the 3 counties where the feuding folks were from--Collin, Grayson and Fannin--had voted against secession. Two of the three, Grayson and Fannin, lie along the Red River, which was the boundary with the Indian Territory that is now Oklahoma and was then a place that all kinds of miscreants could escape into. At least the portion along the Red River was, according to what I've read.

A corner of Fannin County was a dense thicket where some of those who didn't want to join the Confederate army hid out during the War, with their wives showing up each week to leave food for them at prearranged sites. My family was from these counties, but there is very little mention in the family history books that were compiled in the late 20th Century of family service in the Civil War. Perhaps the War was some distance from leaving their wives and children to the more immediate dangers of cattle rustlers, thieves and other bad guys who could do bad deeds in North Texas and then escape across the Red River.

The Unionists had kept a low profile in these counties during the War, but suddenly they were protected by the now in control federal military authorities. Perhaps returning Confederates were unhappy to see them now in favor and angry that they hadn't served. That's probably an underlying basis to the feud, but once it gets started, a feud is a feud.

 
Okay, here's the first part of the article that explains the Lee-Peacock feud. These are probably the best explanations I've seen.

 
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This map shows Grayson County on the left and Fannin on the right, with Collin just below them. The thicket was supposedly down at the intersection of the 3 counties.
 
Interesting thing is that way more people, something like 50, died in the Lee-Peacock feud than in the Hatfield-McCoy feud, which was around a dozen.

Here's a map of Fannin County:

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The left hand corner where it says "Leonard" is down near the area where the feud was ongoing.
 
Fascinating topic! Wasn't Gen Liddell upset about a family graveyard that was in disputed land? All these feuds seem to boil down to property and women. (And that one dame was something! :eek:) One feud that was definitely a feud but nobody would call it that - Forrest/Matlock. The origins of that went back at least three generations to the late 1700s when people began moving over the Alleghenies into Tennessee. Land speculation, some intermarriages, some land inheritance disputes, lawsuits... then a Forrest marries a Matlock! One would think this feud would end with the CW, but it petered out with one last grand fight. One of Maj William Hezekiah Forrest's disgruntled scouts (the major had testified at his murder trial and put him in jail for five years) got together with some Matlocks and bushwhacked him on the Natchez Trace. As it happened, Bill was smaller than his big brother but ten times crazier in a fight - he won but was severely injured. Several years later Bill died of typhoid and complications from the stomach injury that never healed properly. By that time, everybody was dead, mainly from the war, and the disputed property was gone. Nobody cared about feudin' any more! It does make you wonder what the purpose ever was.
 
Wonder why it's the Hatfield/McCoy feud that blew up into legend? I don't mean legend as in mythical, I mean became legendary. There's quite a bit on the Lee/Peacock feud in era newspapers too- what's so odd is 99% of the articles maintain a sense of neutrality. Well, with such a willingness to terminate each other it was probably healthier not to seem biased.

Nobody cared about feudin' any more


I've frequently thought it must take an awful lot of energy and commitment to plain, old hate to continue this stuff. Hate requires fuel to keep it hot. At some point it's got to burn out through lack of nurturing, you know? Beyond all the rest it's got be exhausting. That could be when it occurs to everyone they hate someone else because they were told to and no other reason. So they stop.
 
You know, JPK, sometimes feuds stop because everybody is dead! That's what happened with a famous Indian feud here - the fuse was a stolen rifle but both clans lit up the gulch above town in one epic clash. For literally centuries these two clans had been killing each other but they finished it up this day. One survivor - a girl who was a captured Modoc. She packed some jerky, picked up the disputed gun, and walked back to Tule Lake!
 
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