The Hatfield-McCoy feud is an oft-forgotten vestige of American History, at least to a euro-centric student of history like me. The miniseries is an authentic Romeo and Juliet story: Hatfields and McCoys are feuding families intertwined by love, desertion (Civil War), wealth and death. The cause of the conflict is unimportant. Long-time friends, the patriarchs of their respective families, go separate ways as the Hatfield deserts the Confederate Army to begin a lucrative logging business while the McCoy becomes the sole survivor of his regiment and the suffers in a Union prison. McCoy sees Hatfield’s commercial success to his own suffering and takes it onto himself to do God’s work to rectify the supposed injustice. As the Civil War ends in 1865, the embarrassed and blood-thirsty southerners redirect their anger at each other.
Hatfields & McCoys is a story about escalation, where trivial matters compound into interstate “wars,” where human nature takes revenge too seriously and refuses to forgive and forget. The three-day series gets progressively darker and bloodier. Casualties of this frivolous scrimmage pile up quickly. There is plenty of gratuitous loud-banging, sure to please the thrill-seeking variety, especially those with an affinity for Westerns. It is also quite romantic; the archetypal story of forbidden love is well-told though perhaps the added romanticism was the producer’s attempt to inspire mass appeal. The actual story was probably much less idyllic.
The real reason to watch this miniseries is for its historical accuracy (it is, after all, produced by the History Channel). The setting shows a tumultuous time in the 50 years prior to the modern era. Technological inventions, electricity for example (the lady McCoy asks not to be cremated but to be treated with electricity, whatever that might mean), are set to supercharge America into the 20th century. Social systems (judicial, political, and others) as we know them today are nascent yet immature. (In a show of true American idealism, both sides of the dispute claim the higher moral ground, and often justify their own actions on a pseudo-lawful manner; they often play judge, jury and executioner.) The institution of a united states is forming but is inefficient. (Families lie on either sides of the “Tug Fork,” the division between Kentucky and West Virginia and thus require extradition, lest they take law into their own hands.) And finally, we see a beginning of an interconnectedness (globalization, in today’s business-speak) where the feud becomes a national sensation and executions draw out adrenaline junkies from far and wide.
If this miniseries is accurate, it suggests the late 1800s were a rather brutish time. Lives were so easily lost and wasted. It is surprisingly encouraging how much our social institutions have changed since then. As for the human nature, well that clearly hasn’t changed very much.